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A 

SHORT HISTORY OF 

THE PAPACY 



A SHORT HISTORY OF 
THE PAPACY 



BY 



MARY I. M. BELL 



WITH TWO MAPS 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1921 




^ 



t <9 

A- 



<«1 

ri 









DEDICATED TO 
THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER 

EDWARD BICKERSTETH OTTLEY 



PREFACE 

AHISTOEY of the Papacy must claim to be, 
through many centuries, a history of the 
world. The author of a short history of 
the Papacy has therefore to choose between two al- 
ternatives, and either to construct a chronology of 
events or to concentrate on the moments of great 
importance, connecting them by a thin thread of nar- 
rative from which much that is relevant will be omitted 
for lack of space. I have tried to follow the second 
method in writing this book, and I must ask the indul- 
gence of those whose interest in the Papacy is chiefly 
concentrated in some special aspect or epoch or sphere 
of influence if this is very slightly indicated or even 
entirely omitted. If we admit that religion has a claim 
to penetrate every department of life, we must concede 
to the Papacy, as a spiritual institution, the obligation 
to exert its influence in every sphere of human activity. 
We cannot, in a short book, follow the Popes in the 
whole wide sweep of their spiritual imperium. But I 
have tried here to give a continuous account of its evo- 
lution in history, and particularly to concentrate on the 
intellectual principles by which the Papacy has been 
supported or opposed. 

History is not theology, and I have tried to keep 
the narrative free from doctrinal controversy. But a 

vii 



viii A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

true interpretation of the historical Papacy must be 
one in which the emphasis is laid, negatively as well 
as positively, on the spiritual idea in which it was 
conceived. 

I wish to thank those who have helped me with 
advice and guidance, and in particular my friend and 
tutor, Mr. Edward Armstrong, to whom the conception 
of the book and much else is due. I also wish to thank 
my brother, Captain L. E. Ottley for making the index, 
which my absence from England obliged me to leave to 
him. I am indebted to my husband for preparing 
the maps. 

MAEY I. M. BELL 



CONTENTS 



dPTER PAGE 

PEEFACE vii 

THE POPES xi 

PAET I 
THE EISE OF SPIRITUAL POWER 

I. THE ORIGIN OF SPIRITUAL POWER 3 

II. THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE AND ITS EFFECTS, 

a.d. 312-403 9 

III. THE FALL OF ROME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS, 

a.d. 403-431 16 

IV. LEO THE GREAT: THE HUNS AND THE VANDALS, 

a.d. 431-460 22 

V. GOTHIC RULE, a.d. 461-568 28 

VI. MORAL SUPREMACY: THE EPOCH OF GREGORY THE 

GREAT, a.d. 568-604 37 

PART II 
THE DARK AGES 

VII. THE BREACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST— 

Part I. — The Opening of the Breach, a.d. 604-701 - - 51 
Part II. — The Widening of the Gulf, a.d. 704-751 - - 55 
VIII. THE APPEAL TO THE FRANKS, AND THE REVIVAL OF 

THE WESTERN EMPIRE, a.d. 741-800 - 60 

IX. DECAY OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE, a.d. 800-867 - 72 
X. ARISTOCRATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES, a.d. 867-954 82 
XI. THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM : THE POPES AND THE 

OTTOS, a.d. 955-1046 90 

XII. THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND, a.d. 1046-1085— 

Part I. — Hildebrand 105 

Part II. — Gregory VII. 114 

ix 



A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 



CHAPTER 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 
XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 
XXI. 



PART III 
THE MIDDLE AGES 

PAGE 

THE INVESTITURE WAR, a.d. 1085-1122 - - - - 127 

THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT, a.d. 1122-1179 - - - 142 
CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONARCHY : THE EPOCH OF 

INNOCENT III., a.d. 1179-1217 155 

THE CONTEST WITH FREDERICK STUPOR MUNDI - - 167 
THE LAST STRUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN AND 

THE COMING OF THE FRENCH, a.d. 1251-1276 - - 178 
THE FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY : BONIFACE VIII., 

a.d. 1276-1303 190 

THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF 

THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL, a.d. 1303-1334 - - 201 

WHEN ISRAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT, a.d. 1334-1370 - 215 

THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS, a.d. 1370-1418 - - 227 



PART IV 
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION 

XXII. THE RECOVERY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV., a.d. 

1418-1447 247 

XXIII. THE RENAISSANCE POPES, a.d. 1447-1471 - - - - 262 

XXIV. THE SECULAR PAPACY, 1471-1503 279 

XXV. JULIUS II. AND LEO X.: THE PAPACY AMONG THE 

DYNASTIES, a.d. 1503-1521 - - - - - - 299 

XXVI. THE REFORMATION, a.d. 1517-1550 311 

XXVII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ------ 345 

PART V 
THE PAPACY IN MODERN HISTORY 

XXVIII. THE COUNTER-REFORMATION, a.d. 1555-1605 - - - 329 

XXIX. THE CENTURY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, a.d. 1700-1846 360 

XXX. CONCLUSION 373 

INDEX 387 

MAPS 

FACING PAGE 

I. ITALY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - - - - -* - 142 
II. CENTRAL EUROPE - - 329 






THE POPES 



A.D. 




A.D. 


142 


S. Peter. 


402. 


»67 


Linus. 


417. 


*68 


Clement. 


418. 


>78. 


Anacletue. 


418. 


*91. 


Clement. 


422. 


uoo 


Evarestus. 


432. 


l 109. 


Alexander. 


440. 


119. 


Sixtus I. 


461. 


129. 


Telesphorus. 


468. 


139. 


Hyginus. 


483. 


143. 


Pius I. 


492. 


157. 


Anicetus. 


496. 


168. 


Soter. 


498. 


177. 


Eleutherius. 


498. 


193. 


Victor (?) 


514. 


202. 


Zephyrinus (?) 


523. 


219. 


Calixtus I. 


526. 


223. 


Urban I. 


530. 


230. 


Pontianus. 


530. 


235. 


Anterius. 


532. 


236. 


Fabianus. 


535. 


251. 


Cornelius. 


536. 


252. 


Lucius I. 


537. 


253. 


Stephen I. 


555. 


257. 


Sixtus II. 


560. 


259. 


Dionysius. 


574. 


269. 


Felix. 


578. 


275. 


Eutychianus. 


590. 


283. 


Caius. 


604. 


295. 


Marcellinus. 


607. 


304. 


Vacancy. 


607. 


308. 


Marcellus I. 


615. 


310. 


Eusebius. 


618. 


311. 


Melchiades. 


625. 


314. 


Sylvester I. 


638. 


336. 


Marcus I. 


640. 


337. 


Julius I. 


642. 


352. 


Liberius. 


649. 


356. 


Felix (anti-pope). 


654. 


366. 


Damasus I. 


657. 


384. 


Siricius. 


672. 


398. 


Anastasius I. 


676. 



Innocent I. 

Zosimus. 

Boniface I. 

Eulalius (anti-pope). 

Celestine I. 

Sixtus III. 

Leo I. (the Great). 

Hilarius. 

Simplicius. 

Felix III. 

Gelasius I. 

Anastasius II. 

Symmachus. 

Laurentius (anti-pope). 

Hormisdas. 

John I. 

Felix IV. 

Boniface II. 

Dioscorus (anti-pope). 

John II. 

Agapetus I. 

Silverius. 

Vigilius. 

Pelagius I. 

John III. 

Benedict I. 

Pelagius II. 

Gregory I. (the Great). 

Sabinianus. 

Boniface III. 

Boniface IV. 

Deusdedit. 

Boniface V. 

Honorius I. 

Severinus. 

John IV. 

Theodorus I. 

Martin I. 

Eugenius I. 

Vitalianus. 

Adeodatus. 

Donus I. 



1 These dates cannot be taken as historically proven. They rest on 
evidence varying in its degree of authenticity. 



XI 



Xll 



A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 



A.D. 




A.D. 




678. 


Agatho. 


946. 


Agapetus II. 


682. 


Leo II. 


955. 


John XII. 


683.(?) Benedict II. 


963. 


Leo VIII. 


685. 


John V. 


964. 


Benedict V. (anti-pope). 


685.(?) Conon. 


965. 


John XIII. 


687. 


Sergius I. 


972. 


Benedict VI. 


687. 


Paschal (anti-pope). 


974. 


Boniface VII. (anti-pope). 


687. 


Theodore ,, 


974. 


Domnus II. (?). 


701. 


John VI. 


974. 


Benedict VII. 


705. 


John VII. 


983. 


John XIV. 


708. 


Sisinnius. 


985. 


John XV. 


708. 


Constantine. 


996. 


Gregory V. 


715. 


Gregory II. 


996. 


John XVI. (anti-pope). 


731. 


Gregory III. 


999. 


Sylvester II. 


741. 


Zacharias. 


1003. 


John XVII. 


\ 752. 
V752. 


Stephen (II.). 


1003. 


John XVIII. 


Stephen II. (or III.). 


1009. 


Sergius IV. 


757. 


Paul I. 


1012. 


Benedict VIII. 


767. 


Constantine (anti-pope). 


1024. 


John XIX. 


768. 


Stephen III. (or IV.). 


1033. 


Benedict IX, 


772. 


Hadrian I. 


1044. 


Sylvester (anti-pope). 


795. 


Leo in. 


1045. 


Gregory VI. 


816. 


Stephen IV. 


1046. 


Clement II. 


817. 


Paschal I. 


1048. 


Damasus II. 


824. 


Eugenius II. 


1054. 


Victor II. 


827. 


Valentinus. 


1057. 


Stephen IX. 


827. 


Gregory IV. 


1058. 


Benedict X. 


844. 


Sergius II. 


1059. 


Nicholas II. 


847. 


Leo IV. 


1061. 


Alexander II. 


855. 


Benedict III. 


1073. 


Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) 


855. 


Anastasius (anti-pope). 


1080. 


Clement (anti-pope). 


858. 


Nicholas I. 


1086. 


Victor III. 


867. 


Hadrian II. 


1087. 


Urban II. 


872. 


John VIII. 


1099. 


Paschal II. 


882. 


Martin II. 


1102. 


Albert (anti-pope). 


884. 


Hadrian III. 


1105. 


Sylvester ,, 


885. 


Stephen V. 


1118. 


Gelasius. 


891. 


Formosus. 


1118. 


Gregory (anti-pope). 


896. 


Boniface VI. 


1119. 


Calixtus II. 


V 896. 


Stephen VI. 


1121. 


Celestine (anti-pope). 


897. 


Roinanus. 


1124. 


Honorius II. 


897. 


Theodore II. 


1130. 


Innocent II. 


898. 


John IX. 


1130. 


Anacletus (anti-pope). 


900. 


Benedict IV. 


1138. 


Victor „ 


903. 


Leo V. 


1143. 


Celestine II. 


903. 


Christopher. 


1144. 


Lucius II. 


904. 


Sergius III. 


1145. 


Eugenius IH. 


911. 


Anastasius HI. 


1153. 


Anastasius IV. 


913. 


Lando. 


1154. 


Hadrian IV. 


914. 


JohnX., 


1159. 


Alexander HI. 


928. 


Leo VI. 


1159. 


Victor (anti-pope). 


V 929. 


Stephen VII. 


1164. 


Paschal „ 


931. 


John XI. 


1168. 


Calixtus „ 


936. 


Leo VII. 


1181. 


Lucius in. 


939. 


Stephen VIH. 


1185. 


Urban HI. 


941. 


Martin III. 


1187. 


Gregory VIII. 







THE POPES 


A.D. 






A.D. 




1187. 


Clement HI. 




1484. 


Innocent Vin. 


1191. 


Celestine III. 




1493. 


Alexander VI. 


1198. 


Innocent HL 




1503. 


Pius HI. 


1216. 


Honorius m. 




1503. 


Julius H. 


1227. 


Gregory IX. 




1513. 


LeoX. 


1241. 


Celestine IV. 




1522. 


Hadrian VI. 


1243. 


Innocent IV. 




1523. 


Clement VH. 


1254. 


Alexander IV. 




1534. 


Paul HI. 


1261. 


Urban IV. 




1550. 


Julius in. 


1265. 


Clement IV. 




1555. 


Marcellus H. 


1269. 


Vacancy. 




1555. 


Paul IV. 


1271. 


Gregory X. 




1559. 


Pius IV. 


1276. 


Innocent V. 




1566. 


Pius V. 


1276. 


Hadrian V. 




1572. 


Gregory XHI. 


1277. 


John XX. (or 


XXI.) 


1585. 


Sixtus V. 


1277. 


Nicholas HI. 




1590. 


Urban VH. 


1281. 


Martin IV. 




1590. 


Gregory XIV. 


1285. 


Honorius IV. 




1591. 


Innocent IX. 


1289. 


Nicholas IV. 




1592. 


Clement VIII. 


1292. 


Vacancy. 




1604. 


Leo XI. 


1294. 


Celestine V. 




1604. 


Paul V. 


1294. 


Boniface VHI. 




1621. 


Gregory XV. 


1303. 


Benedict XI. 




1623. 


Urban VHI. 


1305. 


Clement V. 




1644. 


Innocent X. 


1314. 


Vacancy. 




1655. 


Alexander VH. 


1316. 


John XXI. (oi 


xxn.) 


1667. 


Clement IX. 


1334. 


Benedict XH. 




1670. 


Clement X. 


1342. 


Clement VI. 




1676. 


Innocent XI. 


1352. 


Innocent VI. 




1689. 


Alexander Vin 


1362. 


Urban V. 




1691. 


Innocent XH. 


1370. 


Gregory XI. 




1700. 


Clement XI. 


1378. 


Urban VI. 




1720. 


Innocent XHI. 


1378. 


Clement VH. 


[anti-pope). 


1724. 


Benedict XHI. 


1389. 


Boniface IX. 




1730. 


Clement XH. 


1394. 


Benedict (anti- 


pope). 


1740. 


Benedict XIV. 


1404. 


Innocent VH. 




1758. 


Clement XHI. 


1406. 


Gregory XH. 




1769. 


Clement XIV. 


1409. 


Alexander V. 




1775. 


Pius VI. 


1410. 


John XXn. (or XXIII.) 


1800. 


Pius VH. 


1417. 


Martin V. 




1823. 


LeoXH. 


1431. 


Eugenius IV. 




1829. 


Pius vm. 


1439. 


Felix V. (anti-pope). 


1831. 


Gregory XVI. 


1447. 


Nicholas V. 




1846. 


Pius IX. 


1455. 


Calixtus IV. 




1878. 


LeoXm. 


1458. 


PiusH. 




1903. 


PiusX. 


1464. 


Paul n. 




1914. 


Benedict XV. 


1471. 


Sixtus IV. 






**TT 



Xlll 



PART I 
THE RISE OF SPIRITUAL POWER 



CHAPTER I 

THE ORIGIN OF SPIRITUAL POWER 

" X" IKE almost all the great works of nature and of humanx 
power, the Papacy grew up in silence and obscurity."^ 
-* — * But the silence is as eloquent as the obscurity is em- 
blematic of the great future ; for both served as hidden sources 
whence the makers of the Papacy were to draw their warrants in 
later generations, for temporal accretion as well as spiritual ex- 
pansion. 

fThe history of the Papacy has no definite beginning. We 
may accept the assertion that Leo I., or possibly his forerunner 
Innocent, was in fact the first Pope — the first Bishop of Rome, 
that is, who claimed a distinct spiritual overlordship. But the 
fifth century cannot be isolated from the ages which preceded it, 
for an epoch can only stand out in relation to the period which 
leads up to it. /To St. Peter and the legends of St. Peter the 
historian must look for the birth of the Papacy, if for no other 
reason than because it was to the age of St. Peter that the 
architects of papal power turned in their efforts to construct a 
historical basis for their magnificent conception. / 

But it is in this that the modern historian of the Papacy 
differs most widely from his early predecessors, for he has to 
cope with the acts of St. Peter, not as historical landmarks to be 
proved or disproved, but as ideas of the greatest importance, in 
so far as they become articles of faith to the supporters of papal 
power or canons of unbelief to its opponents. Whether St. Peter 
actually founded the Papacy, or whether the Popes evolved the 
legend that he did so, is irrelevant to the story of the Papacy, 
and we can fortunately leave it to theologians to decide as to the 
degree of probability which the facts warrant, and their validity 
as arguments for or against the great cause in which they were 
afterwards pleaded. 

( Of St. Peter's own Bishopric of Rome nothing is known, and 
even tradition is comparatively silent, j His death in the year 64 
is, however, so well attested by the earliest traditions, and so 
consistently dwelt upon, that there seems no reason for doubting 

3 



4 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

its occurrence at that date. By the year 200 the tomb of the 
two Apostles is shown by Caius. Moreover, the traditional date 
of St. Peter's martyrdom coincides with the date of the burning 
of Rome and the Neronian persecution which followed. From 
the earliest beginnings, the See of Rome is associated with the 
name of St. Peter, and by the middle of the second century it is 
mentioned by Irenseus, Clement, Origen, and Tertullian. In the 
third century it is already used by the Popes as a claim to 
supremacy, and it is remarkable that the legend, though resting 
on no definite authority, is at least suffered to pass unchallenged. 
"It is clear that the first Bishops of Rome were in no sense of 
the word spiritual lords of Christendom. They were obscure 
and for the most part insignificant persons, who 1 walked their 
unassuming way unchallenged by the State and unnoticed save 
by the little Greek colony of believers who looked on them as 
shepherds. > We know practically nothing of these precursors of 
papal history save where their shadowy forms are occasionally 
brought to light in the glare of persecution. Their names alone 
come down to us, attached by the loving piety of later ages to 
the fictitious title of martyr, j This much is embodied in the 
various lists of the first four centuries, which have a value above 
and beyond their intrinsic worth, as showing that the succession 
to the Roman bishopric was a matter of interest, even of con- 
troversy, among distant ecclesiastics. The earliest of these 
which is still extant is that of St. Irenseus (c. 160) and the widest 
known is the "Catalogus Liberianus " from which was taken 
the earliest edition of the " Liber Pontificalis ". Of the informa- 
tion which can be gleaned from other sources, there is a general 
absence of any mention of the bishops themselves, and still less 
can we gather anything like a conception of the relations in 
which they stood either towards their own immediate flock or 
towards that wider dominion which they were afterwards to 
claim. The first to lift the veil which hides the nascent Papacy 
completely from view was St. Clement, the third successor of the 
Apostles. His letter to the Church at Corinth is one of the most 
remarkable documents with which the historian of the early 
Church has to deal, and it is tempting to regard it as typical of 
the moment in papal history to which it belongs. In that case, 
the Roman Church is still in this early period very Jewish in 
character. The fall of Jerusalem in the year 70 had brought a 
fresh influx of Jews to Rome and an edict of Tolerance following 
on the proscriptions of Nero further strengthened the Semitic 
element which had from the first been predominant. But at 
the same time, there had been converts in high places ; members 



THE OEIGIN OF SPIKITUAL POWEK 5 

of great families, such as the Pomponii, the Acilii, and the 
Flavii were counted among the Xazarites, and in the years 91 
and 95 there were two Christian consuls, one of whom suffered 
martyrdom. St. Clement is however a Roman of Romans : he 
gives expression to the patriotism and self-esteem becoming in 
a citizen of the world capital, and his letter to the distracted 
Church seems to show that the Roman genius for organisation 
is already crystallising into conceptions of hierarchy. 

Even more interesting is the book of the peasant or 
11 Yeoman " Hermas, which was finished about a.d. 140. The 
" Shepherd of Hermas " has been called " The great examination 
of the conscience of the Roman Church," and the title is the 
more significant when we remember the simple piety of the 
author and the sincerity with which he makes his enquiry. The 
theme of the book is penitence, but the main interest rests in 
the detail in which the conditions of sinners enlighten us as to 
the early Christian community. The chief defect arraigned is 
the frequency of apostasy, which is hardly surprising when one 
reflects how rapidly converts were swept in, and how fiercely the 
storms of persecution beat against their untried faith. The 
Shepherd of Hermas is an admonition rather than an apology, 
and yet the picture it gives of the community of Christian 
Rome is on the whole surprisingly felicitous. We feel that it 
is a society which is defective but very sincere, that the very 
severity with which its shortcomings are denounced testifies to 
the purity of its ideal. The quarrels among the clergy were 
deplored just because they were true Shepherds ; apostasy was 
common, but Christian heroism was the rule. 

The admonitions of Hermas were well-timed, for a stronger 
enemy was at hand. In the middle of the second century, 
heresy first made its appearance in Rome in the form of 
Marcionism, against which Justin Martyr spent his energy in 
waging war. Thus already by the third century Rome is regarded 
as the gravitating-point for aggressive heresiarchs : she alone 
must arbitrate even as she alone can define the truth. 

The spiritual prestige of the Eternal City grew apace 
throughout the second century. St. Ignatius refers to her as 
" she who hath presidency in the place of the region of the 
Romans," and the context, while omitting all mention of the 
Episcopal office, ascribes the ascendancy to a kind of social 
and municipal priority which the Roman Church naturally 
borrowed from the political autocracy of the city. The so-called 
Clementina erected for her the fictionary tradition of orthodox 
championship through the legend of St. Peter and Simon Magus, 



6 A SHOBT HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY 

and henceforth vague petrarchal legends are interwoven with 
well-defined tradition as instruments of aggressive warfare 
against the spiritual foes of the Roman Bishop. 

The story of Christianity in the third century has two main 
characteristics, and each of these has its bearing on the develop- 
ment of the Papacy. 

We are confronted, on the one hand, with the phenomenon of 
heresy, which grew apace in the uncertain soil of the primitive 
Church ; and, on the other hand, we stand face to face with the 
splendid drama of Christian heroism which the age of persecu- 
tion presents. 

The first of these two forces, the growth of heresy, has 
indeed a negative importance which outweighs its positive 
influence on the Roman Church. It was mainly because Rome 
was so little affected by the various waves of fantastic specula- 
tion which swept the whole of Christendom during this period 
that the Apostolic See was enabled to lay its foundations so 
steadily and unobtrusively in the formative age of ecclesiastical 
history. The contrast between East and West in this connection 
has often been dwelt upon, and indeed, it is said, with perhaps 
undue emphasis. But it would be hard to deny the truth, or to 
exaggerate the importance of the distinction which eternally 
separates the practical genius of the methodical West from the 
mystical dreaminess of the Oriental mind. At the same time, it 
was not in vain that heresiarchs flocked to Rome for a hearing, 
and as early as a.d. 130 the Marcionite sect had planted the first 
alien seed in the virgin soil of the Roman Church. But the 
attitude of the sainted Polycarp, when, as a visitor in Rome, 
he was confronted with Marcion, is typical of the stainless 
orthodoxy which always characterised the majority of Roman 
Christians. "Knowest thou me?" asked the heretic. "Yea, I 
recognise the first-born of Satan," answered the martyr, and 
St. Justin instantly took up the cudgels for the Church, which 
never lacked a champion when her truths were menaced by the 
onset of fanaticism. 

Marcionism was but the first of a long series of weary 
internal struggles which left their influence on the Roman 
Church, although none were indigenous in their growth. Still 
more influential was the hold which Montanism gained over the 
Roman people, attracting converts, as is so often the case, by 
the very repulsiveness of its severity and gloom. The chief 
Roman opponent of Montanism was Hippolytus, the prototype 
of Luther and the patron saint of heretics, who is in some ways 
the most remarkable figure of the period. He is chiefly 



THE OEIGIN OF SPIK1TUAL POWEE 7 

associated with the greater struggle to which Montanism gave 
place — that of Monarchianism, or Patripassionism. This con- 
test, which lasted through three pontificates, originated in the 
attempt of one Praxeas to harmonise Christianity with the 
spirit of Hellenism. But the subtleties involved in the delicate 
conception of the Logos were altogether too much for the Roman 
mind, untrained as it was in metaphysical abstractions. Three 
successive Popes were bewildered and harassed by the conten- 
tion ; each took refuge in a different line of policy, and all were 
equally unsuccessful in effecting a conclusion. Pope Victor 
contented himself with condemning Sabellius, who had unwisely 
ventured to mediate, and thus made himself the scapegoat of 
both the opposing parties. Zephyrinus, Victor's successor, is the 
first Pope of whose personality we have any real hint in the 
somewhat colourless annals of the time. He seems to have 
been a vacillating person of inferior intellect, dominated by the 
stronger mental capacities of his major-domo and successor, 
Callixtus. Zephyrinus reigned for nineteen years without 
making up his mind in any one consistent direction on the 
great doctrinal controversy. At one moment he identifies 
himself with the " Patripassions " ; at another he publicly 
retracts his self- committal. Throughout, he was consistently 
opposed by the relentless logic of Hippolytus — the one man who 
had the courage to face the problem whose intricacies paralysed 
the whole of Western Christendom. Branded by the title of 
Ditheist, and goaded into schism by the inconsistencies of the 
Pope, Hippolytus cut himself off from the orthodox Church just 
at the moment when Callixtus was elected to succeed his patron 
as Bishop of Rome. If the attack of Hippolytus on Zephyrinus 
reveals the contempt of the zealot for the nonentity — of intel- 
lectual vigour for mental lethargy — in his indictment of Callixtus 
a deeper personal rancour can be traced, in which the indigna- 
tion of the intrepid heretic is stirred against the dishonest 
subterfuges of the unworthy champion of orthodoxy. Not 
content with exposing the inconsistency of the impossible 
doctrinal compromise put forward by Callixtus, he writes a 
polemic against his not invulnerable career, ending in a vigorous 
attack on his indulgence towards offending brethren. It is 
remarkable that the first great antipope should also be in a 
sense the father of papal history. His chronicle, written 
apparently in the year 235, became the skeleton of the famous 
" Liber Pontificalis," whose many editions form the chief sources 
of early papal chronology. 

The great Monarchian controversy was brought to an abrupt 



8 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

conclusion by the persecution of Maximinian. By the third 
century, it is important to notice that a definite policy towards 
Christianity was a necessary part of the political programme of 
the Emperors. The tempered hostility of Marcus Aurelius, 
based on the antithesis between stoicism and enthusiasm, paled 
before the dissolute ardour of his successors. But the persecu- 
tions of the third century were produced rather by sudden 
flashes of imperial caprice and intolerance than by a settled 
resentment and suspicion, such as underlay the earlier outbursts 
of hostility. Not only was the time past when Christianity 
could be ignored, but the moment had come when resistance to 
its gathering tide had broken down. Persecution had given it a 
history, and the failure of the State to extinguish it had but 
vindicated its claim to exist as an integral part of the Roman 
system. Rome dared no longer to oppose a force which she 
could not control, and by a sudden change of front she adopted 
into her favour the society which she had failed to extinguish. 
Hereafter she was to renew her own youth in the young life of 
a community deriving its vitality from the power of a doctrine 
in which strange and familiar ideas seemed to be startlingly 
blended. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE AND ITS EFFECTS, 

a.d. 312-403 

IN the year 312, the religion of the Pope became the religion 
of the Emperor. The scene on the Campagna, which has 
been variously regarded as the cause, the symbol, or the 
pretext of the conversion of Constantino, was not merely a 
dramatic finale to the era of persecution. It marks in a real 
sense the first great political revolution of papal history. The 
vision of the naming Cross which gave to Constantine his empire, 
gave also to the Papacy the standard of mediaeval Christendom. 
The third century had not after all done more than make it 
possible for a strong Bishop to assert his own individuality, and 
impart something of his personal prestige to the dignity of his 
office. But the Bishop of Rome as the High Priest of the State 
religion, the " accredited functionary " of imperial ceremonies, is 
a totally different person from the uninfluential leader of an 
obscure sect which is persecuted or tolerated according to the 
deviating policy of the Emperor of the moment. 

It may be true that Constantine was " great " in his achieve- 
ments rather than his character, and certainly it is hard to 
reconcile what we know of his personal life with anything 
approaching to the Christian ideal. But the edict of Milan, 
which constitutes the charter of endowment of Western Christ- 
ianity, is the work of a strong man who does not shrink from 
giving the boldest expression to his convictions — whether 
political or religious, or both — in terms of uncompromising 
definition. Nothing better illustrates the importance which was 
attached to Constantine's relationship to the Papacy than the 
legend of his baptism by Pope Silvester, and the myth of the 
Donation which was built up on it, and embodied in the 
celebrated forgery of the eighth century. The legend exaggerates 
his zeal for the faith of his adoption while it depreciates his 
statesmanship, and gives rise to the poet's invective — 

9 



10 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Of how much ill was cause 
Not thy conversion, but those rich domains 
That the first wealthy Pope received of thee. 

The fictionary grant was founded on the authentic edict by 
which Constantino endowed the Roman See with the right of 
holding property and receiving it by bequest, and thus laid the 
foundations of temporal power. 

So far the work of Constantino in augmenting the papal 
power was but the consequence of his partial, or at least formal 
conversion, but his career has a still wider significance in the 
early development of the Papacy. When the Emperor adopted 
the religion of the Pope and raised him to pre-eminence in the 
imperial city, no one dreamed that Constantine was adopting 
Silvester as heir to his prerogative in the world's capital. And 
yet for posterity it has this meaning. The foundation of new 
Rome in 330 was a heavy blow to the prestige of the Mother City, 
and the domination which the Bishop instantly assumed was a 
remarkable concurrence of the expedient and the inevitable. 
Bereft of the sacred presence of a Caesar who had lost interest 
in its welfare, the capital of the empire must have fallen a prey 
to invasion from without, or sedition from within, while such 
Byzantine influences as would have penetrated its walls from the 
nominal seat of government, would sap its vigour and saturate it 
with Oriental apathy. That such a state of things was avoided 
was due solely and entirely to the rise of the Papacy. It was to 
her Bishop that the city turned in her bereavement for con- 
solation ; to him she looked for a new insignia and a new raison 
d'etre, and in his religion she sought another tradition to replace 
the majesty of imperial presence which had been rudely wrested 
from her crown. That the Popes were ready, and more than 
ready, to accept the burden of sovereignty, and to take up the 
sceptre which lay at their feet, must be accepted as a sign 
of their political energy rather than regretted as a stigma of 
worldliness. Everything pointed to the legitimacy of such 
authority, and there was as yet no hint of that dualism between 
Church and State which seems to us in the light of subsequent 
history so inevitable. After all, the High Priest of the Hebraic 
tradition and the Pontifex Maximus of the Romans themselves 
had never been called upon to apologise for their plenipotentiary 
powers, and it would be unreasonable to expect political thought 
of the fourth century to grasp a distinction which the last 
epoch of the Middle Ages was unable to formulate. 

The actual history of the Papacy in the fourth century is 
soon told, for the atmosphere is still very obscure, and what we 



THE CONVEESION OF CONSTANTINE 11 

know about the Popes themselves bears a very slight proportion 
to the extent of their importance. 

The first characteristic which marks the papal policy is the 
completeness of the separation between East and West. This is 
illustrated in a remarkable degree by the attitude of the Popes 
towards the great Trinitarian controversy which monopolised the 
energy of Eastern Christendom throughout the first half of the 
fourth century. In the early period of the strife, the attitude of 
Rome is distinctly lukewarm; Silvester stands aloof from the 
conflict, and his counsels are all for peace. He is represented at 
Nicsea by two presbyters, who take very little part in the 
proceedings, while he himself rigidly maintains an attitude of 
dignified aloofness which probably proceeded as much from lack 
of interest as from the instinct of caution. It seemed to the West- 
ern mind, as it at first appeared to Constantine himself, vague, 
unreal, and wordy — the argument turned on a metaphysical 
distinction expressed in terms of Oriental abstraction. But just 
as Constantine himself became convinced when deeper issues 
showed themselves, so the Pope found his defences giving way 
when the second phase of the struggle brought him face to face 
with the practical consequences of the schism. 

In 340, the great champion of orthodoxy was for a second 
time banished from his See by Constantius, the most dissolute of 
Constantine's unworthy successors. Athanasius, understanding 
that the next move in the Arian programme was to win over 
the Pope, instantly withdrew to Rome. The extraordinary 
fascination of the " puny little man " with the great soul, whose 
sweetness of character blended so felicitously with the strength 
of his convictions, no doubt gave him a natural power of success 
as an evangelist, and for two years he taught the Romans what 
was really involved in the great central doctrine of Christianity, 
till all vestiges of suspicion of " Orientalism " was dispelled from 
their minds and from that of Pope Julius himself. But probably 
more effective than any dialectic victory with the people of 
Rome was the argument of experience which the Eastern 
situation afforded. Athanasius might plead for the purity of 
Christian doctrine with the eloquence born of unswerving faith, 
he might appeal to the orthodox tradition which the past had 
already associated with Christian Rome ; but he had only to turn 
the eyes of his hearers over the sea to Alexandria and Anfcioch, 
where pagans and Arians were united in persecution and 
sacrilege, and the practical mind of Rome would not be slow to 
recognise the significance of such an alliance. In 342, Julius 
declared Athanasius to be innocent and his doctrine orthodox, 



12 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 






and a little later, he summoned a Council at Sardica to give 
universal expression to the same verdict. But the Arian 
Bishops were not prepared for an oecumenical settlement of this 
kind, and at the last moment they withdrew under a pretext of 
recall, setting up a hostile assembly at Philippopolis. At a 
confirmatory Council at Milan, the Western Church, under the 
auspices of Pope and Emperor, formally registered its orthodoxy, 
and thus ratified the breach between East and West which 
Sardica had disclosed. The first phase of Roman intervention 
closes here, and the second is less creditable to the Holy See. 
In 352, Julius was succeeded by Liberius, who inherited from 
his predecessor his zealous championship of Athanasius and his 
cause. But conditions became more complicated owing to the 
death of the orthodox Constans, leaving Constantius in 353 sole 
Emperor of new and old Rome. In 355, a Council was sum- 
moned to Milan by the Emperor to lodge fresh charges against 
Athanasius and secure his condemnation in the West. But the 
Church of the West justified its independence, and Constantius, 
behind the arras, heard himself denounced in terms which 
dumbiounded his Eastern followers. An imperial fulmination 
followed, against which the Church had as yet no valid weapons 
to employ. So three Bishops were immediately driven into 
banishment, and after an interval in which to reconsider his 
position, Liberius followed them, full of venerable courage and 
noble intention. But two years of the misery of exile broke the 
old man's spirit, which had at first soared high among the ideals 
of Athanasius and led him to refuse gifts sent by his imperial 
antagonist in words of haughty disdain. " You have desolated 
the Churches of Christendom," he said to the eunuch who 
brought him the gold of Constantius, "and then you offer me 
alms as a convict. Go, first learn to be a Christian." 

The persecution of Liberius is a striking instance of the hold 
which the papal idea had already won among the Romans. 
Liberius might acquiesce in the imperial decree of banishment, 
and might choose, if he pleased, to try the road of martyrdom, 
but the sheep of his flock were unprepared to follow his docility. 
Hence, an attempt of Constantius to create schism by the 
election of an anti-pope in 356 was foredoomed to disaster. The 
imperial nominee, elected, it is said, by three eunuchs, was of 
course an Arian, but the opposition of Rome was less a matter 
of orthodoxy than of personal loyalty to the legitimate Bishop. 

A deputation of patrician women undertook the task which 
their husbands had been reluctant to attempt, and success- 
fully carried it through, winning the provisional consent of 



THE CONVERSION OF CONSTANTINE 13 

Constantius to the return of Liberius. Unfortunately for his 
historical reputation, Liberius proved all too compliant, and as 
the condition of his return consented to sign the semi-Arian 
creed of Sirmium. His entry into Rome was a triumphal page- 
ant, which too soon developed into a faction fight. A riot in the 
amphitheatre, accompanied by the cry of the populace for " One 
God, one Pope ! " led to the expulsion of the anti-Pope Felix and 
the termination of the first schism of papal history. 

The seeds of schism, once sown, were however never far from 
the surface of the soil, and the rivalry between Liberius and 
Felix broke out again in 358, on the death of the Apostate 
Bishop, in a disputed election. The two candidates, Damasus 
and Ursicinus, seem to have represented in some measure the 
rival principles of Arianism and orthodoxy, but the heresy in 
this phase was rather a pretext for schism than a genuine cause 
of disunion. At any rate, the rival candidates are both 
arraigned with equal severity by the impartial judgment of their 
contemporary, Ammianus, who anathematises them as authors 
of tumult and their followers as disturbers of the peace. The 
same writer gives a depressing account of the luxury and licence 
which accompanied the growth of papal power at this time, and 
his words are more than confirmed by the witness of his greater 
contemporary, St. Jerome, whose denunciations have all the 
added force which internal evidence can supply. It is needless 
to recapitulate the indictment of the great ascetic, or to para- 
phrase his rhetoric : his writings are classics of Christianity, and 
the charges which he brings against Christian Rome are just 
what we should expect. Ancient Rome was dying fast — its 
institutions, its morals, and its social conditions were moribund, 
and it is not surprising that the great instrument of its 
regeneration should be itself infected by the symptoms of decay. 
But the vicious tendencies which inevitably crept into the body 
politic of the Church were not without their antidote, and the 
success of Damasus in defeating his rival Ursicinus, however 
incomplete in itself was a distinct triumph for the reform party. 
What history knows of Damasus does not reveal an attractive 
personality, but he is to a great extent overshadowed by the 
more striking figure of his secretary, whose principles he seems 
to have shared. The force upon which Jerome relied to 
counteract the spirit of decadence was that of monasticism, 
which had already been communicated to the West by the 
preaching of Athanasius. The primitive monastic ideal of 
Jerome had little in common with the attractive simplicity of 
the rule of St. Benedict and St. Bernard. It was rugged, crude, 



14 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

and exotic — often perverted by fanatics of the type of Simon of 
the pillar, and seldom entirely free from excessive exaggeration. 
And yet none but the most unimaginative can fail to recognise 
the inspiration which underlay the austerity of Jerome and his 
followers, or to detect the hidden beauty of the truth, trans- 
cending the repulsive forms which embody it. The spirit of the 
movement was reactionary, and reaction is seldom untainted 
with hysteria : its form was premature, and consequently mis- 
understood. These two characteristics account for the failure of 
Jerome to attain what was evidently his object — the succession 
to the Papacy. A young patrician girl had killed herself by 
excessive asceticism under his spiritual supervision, and a 
storm of indignation broke out against him. He had declared 
the " inner world of moral freedom " to be the only refuge from 
the powers of decadence, and his adherents parodied his words 
by excesses of fanaticism, while his opponents saw that the 
perversion of his teaching was sapping the strength of the 
State life. It is, therefore, less surprising that Jerome was not 
elected to the Papacy in 384 than that he should have regarded 
his own prospects as favourable. Had he attained to this, his 
avowed ambition, it is probable that his reputation in the mind 
of Christendom would have suffered. It is doubtful whether 
the great Father had in him the makings of a great Pope, and it 
is certain that the honour which he might have reaped as Pope 
could not have surpassed the homage which the Church has 
always yielded to the author of the " Vulgate ". 

So, probably, it was a good thing, both for Rome and for 
Christendom, that the exaggerated ardour of Jerome should be 
defeated by the mediocrity of Siricius. This pontificate is, how- 
ever, important in one respect, for Siricius inaugurated the legal 
supremacy of the Papacy by the issue of the first Decretal. 
There is nothing tentative in the tone in which the Bishop of 
Rome addresses the Bishop of Tarragona in this document. He 
defines and lays down the law with a certainty of precision which 
leaves no room for doubt that what is received at Rome will be 
acceptable to the uttermost parts of the earth. Thus the first 
papal edict declared the Church's mind on subjects of the most 
vital importance, and no one saw what was implied in the passive 
acquiescence which greeted it. No Hilary of Aries raised his 
voice in protest, and no Luther was at hand to save the situation 
in its initial stages, before long centuries of petty strife had 
made the Reformation crisis inevitable. 

By the close of the fourth century the early Papacy had 
begun that quiet ascendant course which was to reach its zenith 



THE CONYEESION OF CONSTANTINE 15 

in Hildebrand. Founded on the petrarchal tradition, and 
supported by the "magic of the name of Rome," the upward 
course was clear. All that was needed was a series of great men 
capable of piloting it aright, and of these the dawn of the fifth 
century saw the forerunner in the first Innocent. 



CHAPTER III 

THE FALL OF ROME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS, 
a.d. 403-431 

THE fall of Rome and the events leading up to it may 
seem to have little to do with the growth of the early- 
Papacy, which is in its essence organic, and more or 
less independent of external conditions. At the same time, the 
identity between the Eternal and the Holy See was by this time 
closely established, and it would be hardly credible to suppose 
that the political crisis, at which the whole world stood aghast, 
should leave unmoved the spiritual institution which it most 
nearly affected. 

It was the ghost of Rome which Alaric went forth to attack — 
the phantom which haunted the Forum and the Palatine Hill, 
which held the world in awe, and survived both the ravages of 
the invader and the undermining of internal decay. The genius 
and the good fortune of the pioneers of papal power had 
established its alliance with the invincible wraith, and assured 
the road to success. The reaction of the idea of Rome on 
the idea of Catholic supremacy had already begun to work, and 
it remained for the fifth century to supply a succession of able 
Popes qualified to pilot the papal fortunes through the laby- 
rinths of political confusion which afforded alike their danger 
and their opportunity. 

According to Jerome, Innocent was the son of his pre- 
decessor Anastasius, and the origin seems a likely one, for he 
mounted the papal throne with no uncertain step. We find in 
him the first vestiges of a definite conception of spiritual 
supremacy, and in his dealings with the rest of Christendom we 
seem to trace the workings of a fully-developed theory of papal 
autocracy. Such a theory had been made possible by the 
achievements of the fourth century Popes, and above all by the 
supposed origin of appeals at the Council of Sardica. It seems 
likely that the appeal of the Bishop of Illyricum to Pope Julius 
on that occasion was nothing more than a request for arbitration, 

16 



FALL OF EOME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS 17 

but the decree of the Emperor Valentinian II. in 381 put it to 
the dangerous use of a precedent, and established by law the 
claim which as yet the Popes had hardly ventured to formulate. 

At a time when the Empire itself was stricken with the 
paralysis of fear and the apathy of decay, an imperial edict was 
still a weapon to conjure with, and from the first Innocent 
grasped it with all the skill of an ambitious adventurer. At one 
moment he generalises with convenient vagueness, and at another 
he asserts and defines with intrepid precision. He brandishes it 
in the face of the Bishops of Rouen and Toulouse, while he 
hides it under a cloak of compromise in dealing with the more 
independent Churches of Macedonia and Africa. By a happy 
coincidence of spiritual discernment and worldly discretion, he 
was able to espouse the cause of Christendom, the " Golden 
Mouth" against Theophilus, and thus to justify his claim to 
appellate jurisdiction by his competent discrimination. 

Even in Rome, however, the power of the law paled for a 
moment before the political crisis, and Innocent's clever manipu- 
lation of precedent falls into insignificance beside the states- 
manlike activity which could turn the calamity of Rome to the 
gain of the Papacy. His priority in the city had gained a new 
security from the failure of the imperial experiment of residing 
in Rome, which Honorius had attempted in 403. Roman 
patriotism — effete as it was — survived in an intense longing of 
the Roman people for their Caesar's return, and an impatient 
weariness of the imperial boast that "Where the Emperor is, 
there is Rome ". The young Honorius consequently yielded to 
their entreaty, only to inflict on their feelings a deeper wound by 
the failure of the experiment. All the resources of a worn-out 
pageantry were called forth after a hundred years of disuse, and 
on the Milvian Bridge, the Roman people with Innocent and his 
clergy at their head, welcomed the triumphant youth in his 
chariot with his father-in-law, the hero Stilicho, beside him. 
But the dilapidated splendour of the Palatine Hill oppressed 
Honorius, and he was frankly bored with the shabby magnificence 
which was the best that old Rome could afford in his honour. 
(£ It seemed as if affrighted Rome had decked herself as a bride 
to meet her long-expected wooer, but the bride was old and the 
wooer feeble." \yith ill-disguised relief, Honorius seized the first 
pretext which the Gothic war afforded to leave the city that 
had yearned over him with pathetic solicitude. From the sunlit 
plains of Ravenna, he watched Stilicho complete his cycle of 
victories by the defeat of Rhadagaisus the Goth, and the relief 
of Florence, and connived at the plots which were already 

2 



18 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

gathering thick about the hero's path. Stilicho fell in 408, a 
victim to the fate which is typical of the defenders of Italy, and 
his execution removed the last obstacle which stood between the 
barbarian conqueror and Rome. Urged on by the restless 
" demon " of his ambition and encouraged by the superstitious 
terror of his opponents, Alaric, "the scourge of God," pressed on 
to the walls of Rome. Men watched his progress with the 
fascination of fear, reminding themselves of Sibylline prophecy 
and apocalyptic prediction of anti-Christ, while the poem of 
Claudian has in its appeal all the pathos of a dirge. "Arise, O 
venerable Mother! Free thyself from the ignoble fears of old 
age ! O city, coeval with the earth. When the Don shall water 
the plains of Egypt, and the Nile the Mceotian marshes, then 
only shall iron Lachesis lay on thee her doom ! " 

But the doom was one which neither the passion of the poet, 
nor the spell of the city's majestic charm, nor the appeal of Pope 
Innocent could avert, for it was written far back in the pages of 
the past and carried in its train all the earnests of future promise. 
From the darkness which settles over the condemned city, the 
faint light of coming dawn is never entirely absent, and the grim 
details of the three sieges lose some of their tragic significance 
when we regard them as the birth-pangs of a new era, or the 
wounds inevitable to the sudden sharp collision between the 
ancient and the modern world. 

The sack of Rome was no mere display of barbaric audacity ; 
the humiliation of the city was complete, and the life-work of 
Alaric was deliberately carried out in keeping with the fanatical 
spirit in which it was conceived. The horror of Europe as 
expressed by St. Jerome was unfeigned — "With one city the 
whole world had perished. . . . My voice is choked, and my 
sobs interrupt the words which I write; the city is subdued 
which subdued the world." 

And yet, the collapse of pagan Rome, so bitterly lamented by 
the great Christian father, not only revealed the hidden strength 
of the Christian community, but in a real sense augmented its 
power. The Goths, though Arians, did not carry doctrinal 
controversy into political warfare, and with a spirit of toleration 
from which later ages have much to learn, Alaric spared Christian 
churches from pillage and Christian virgins from violation. 
Nor was this the only advantage reaped by the Church in Rome. 
The withdrawal of the Goths in 412 was followed by the 
gradual return of the scattered Romans to their city, but they 
were no longer as sheep not having a shepherd. In the place of 
the absentee Emperor with his incompetent bureaucracy stood one 



FALL OF EOME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS 19 

who called himself their father; whose official claim combined 
the mystical element which the imperial idea had fostered with 
the spirit of practical and efficient leadership, so long invoked in 
vain. 

Pope Innocent was absent during the siege on an embassy 
to Honorius, and thus in his very person stood aloof from the 
horrors of the fall. For the rest of his life he ruled supreme in 
the ruined city, and converted the sepulchre of the Roman 
Empire into the cradle of spiritual sovereignty. Before his 
death in 417 he once more vindicated his appellate claim by the 
condemnation of Pelagius, whose heretical teaching founded the 
great free-will controversy, which held the place in the West 
occupied by Trinitarianism in the East. By adhering to the 
Augustinian teaching as opposed to the fatalism of Pelagius, 
Innocent showed that readiness to identify himself with the 
spirit of the age which has always been the secret of papal 
success. The condemnation of Pelagius by Innocent was by no 
means a foregone conclusion : Pelagius himself had preached in 
Rome, and the Pope had not interfered to prevent him. The 
success of the appeal against the heretic, therefore, gave so 
much gratification to the African fathers, by whom it was 
presented, that they forgot to resent the tone of authority in 
which the decision was made. Once again the astounding 
claims passed unchallenged because they were wisely wielded by 
an able Pope for the benefit of the Church at large, and no one 
realised the danger that lurked behind the simple and satisfactory 
system of Church government. 

The pontificate of Innocent showed what the Papacy might 
become in the hands of a "great" Pope: under his successors, 
the conditional aspect becomes emphasised. Between the years 
417 and 440, a series of ineffective Popes did their best to undo 
what Innocent had achieved. The evil effects of the Gothic 
invasions were brought to light : wealth streamed in from rich 
proselytes and crystallised into patrimonies, while the process of 
materialisation sapped the spiritual energy of the Christian 
community. 

For a year and a half after the death of Innocent, Pope 
Zosimus fluctuated between the conflicting tides of Pelagianism 
and orthodoxy, and the African fathers, who had raised no protest 
when Innocent claimed Apostolic authority, set at nought 
St. Peter's less capable successor, and appealed against him to 
Csesar. 

The death of Zosimus was the signal for the third tumult 
known to history on the occasion of a papal election. An 



20 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

incredible lack of definition marked the area of the electorate. 
The clergy, the people, the Emperor, each claimed a voice, and 
in the vagueness of their relative rights and the utter lack of 
machinery, the power of election was apt to devolve on the 
faction which could best succeed in shouting down its rivals. 
The imperial party was at first successful in this case, owing to 
the energy of the prefect Symmachus, who was inclined to 
support Eulalius. But the popular party was loud in the support 
of Boniface, and the irresolute Emperor decreed a suspension of 
the decision during which both candidates were to absent 
themselves from Rome and a synod of Bishops was to be called 
upon to arbitrate. The headstrong Eulalius, having already 
been received with pomp in St. Peter's, tried, however, to force 
the hand of Honorius by a surprise entry into Rome. This put 
him in the wrong and left the honours of the contest to his rival. 
It was a popular victory, inasmuch as Boniface had relied on 
popular favour, but all the fruits of the contest fell to the 
Emperor, who assumed, as a right inherent in the imperial office, 
the power to determine disputed elections to the Papacy. 

Boniface was succeeded by Celestine, whose pontificate as well 
as that of Sixtus, his successor, was occupied by the great 
Nestorian conflict in the East. Like the Trinitarian controversy 
of which it was an offshoot, Nestorianism did not in itself affect 
Western Christianity : it was even more intricate and meta- 
physical than the Arian question, and it absorbed the Papacy in 
its practical rather than its doctrinal aspect, as an interesting 
political problem and not as a vital theological contention. 

Indeed, in the East itself, the spiritual controversy was far 
from independent of political strife, and the rivalry between 
Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria often de- 
generated into a series of counter-intrigues, centring in the 
Imperial Court. Nestorianism was an application of the 
principles underlying Trinitarianism to the person of the 
Virgin Mary. Nestorius argued against the title " God-bearer," 
as applied to her by his opponents. Christ-bearer she was 
indeed — Mother of the blended personalities in her Son; but 
that which was born of her was not the Eternal Word which 
proceedeth from the Father. 

in 429, Rome was first brought into the conflict by the 
appeal of each of the protagonists in turn — Nestorius and 
Cyril. True to the traditions of Innocent, Celestine answered in 
a mandate, offering to Nestorius the alternatives either of abject 
apology within ten days or excommunication. In December 
430, Celestine and Cyril combined in excommunicating Nestorius, 



FALL OF ROME TO THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS 21 

who clung fearlessly to his opinions and relied on the favour of 
the Imperial Court, and the outcome of his firmness was the 
first General Council of Ephesus in 431. Once more the 
unerring papal instinct vindicated the appellate claim of the 
Pope. When the letters of Celestine were read to the Council 
by the papal representative, they were found to coincide so 
exactly with the decision at which the Council had already 
arrived that a chorus of acclamation greeted the sentiments — 
" The Council renders thanks to the Second Paul, Celestine ; to 
the Second Paul, Cyril ; to Celestine, protector of the faith ; to 
Celestine, unanimous with the Council ". 

The Council did not bring the heresy to an end and 
Nestorianism expired only when it was finally deserted by the 
Imperial Court, and when its aged author died of the dishonour 
of exile. But with the close of the Council, the intervention 
of Rome ends, and Sixtus III., the successor of Celestine, erected 
a memorial to the contest in the Church of Santa Maria 
Maggiore. 



CHAPTER IV 

LEO THE GREAT : THE HUNS AND THE VANDALS, 
a.d. 431-460 

INNOCENT I. had founded the Papacy on the principles of 
monarchy; to Leo I. it remained to give it an imperial 
character. The first " great " Pope was great in virtue of 
his age rather than in spite of it ; he was the one great man in 
an age which is singularly destitute of nobility, the hero of an 
epoch in which the heroic virtues were conspicuously lacking. 
And yet he is eminently representative of the time, and there is 
nothing in his career that is not in accordance with the prin- 
ciples and ideas of his generation. 

Leo was a Roman, rugged and simple in character, with the 
practical genius of his race showing itself in a large capacity for 
organisation, and a strong "imperial purpose," which effected 
the transformation of the papal office from an indefinite personal 
ascendancy to the centre of a world-wide system. His early life 
afforded the best possible training for his high office. In 422, 
he was made Archdeacon of the Church of Rome, and between 
then and his election, in 439, he was employed on various 
diplomatic missions, consummating in an embassy of reconcilia- 
tion between iEtius and Albinus, the two rival generals in Gaul. 

Leo showed none of the conventional self- depreciation on his 
election to the Papacy. With characteristic simplicity he 
expresses his confidence that " He will give the power Who 
bestowed the dignity," somewhat to the astonishment of those 
who had elected him, who had probably anticipated the usual 
dramatic refusal of office with the subsequent submission to 
compulsion. The self-confidence of Leo stood him in good stead 
as the obstacles in the way of papal power crowded before his 
eyes. 

The first enemy which he had to encounter was the advance 
of heresy, which was the chief menace to Catholic unity, now 
that paganism had ceased from troubling the realms of 
Christendom. Leo's method of attack was both characteristic 
and original, and singularly effective. He was the first Bishop 

%% 



LEO THE GEEAT : THE HUNS AND VANDALS 23 

of Rome who made use of the pulpit as a real means of reaching 
the conscience of his people. In his sermons, we have the 
clearest picture of the man himself which the times afford, as 
well as admirable illustrations of his methods. His style is 
simple, severe, and emphatic, and his method essentially- 
Roman. The Catholic faith, he holds, is true and easy to 
comprehend; it admits of no half-truth and needs no discus- 
sion. Heretics, therefore, are all enemies to be fought and 
suppressed — anything but sincere critics open to conviction. 
All contact other than antagonistic between them and true 
believers is obnoxious, and the most offensive are those nearest 
at hand, viz., the Manichseans. Against the Manichseans, Leo 
summons all the invectives which a forcible diction can 
muster, and launches them with apostolic fervour into the 
midst of his hearers. Having stirred up public opinion by 
verbal condemnation, he gives it vent in legal persecution. In 
443, an investigation was made of the charges of immorality 
brought against the Manichseans, with results which amply 
justify Leo's severity — at all events in the light of the principles 
of justice, in so far as the fifth century had evolved them. The 
doctrine of Manes, based on a belief in the inherent evil of all 
matter, had been made to cover a complete disregard of any 
moral principle in the material realm. Good and evil were 
said to have no relation whatever to the physical nature of man, 
and the practical outcome of such a creed weighed more 
strongly with Leo than any theoretical error in their dogma. 
Instead of adding fuel to the flames by argument, after the 
fashion of an Eastern champion of orthodoxy, Leo quenched the 
ardour of the Manichseans in a deluge of papal anathemas, 
strengthened by imperial edict. 

"The citadel of the devil is in the madness of the 
Manichseans," he cries, and in the appeal to common sense, as 
opposed to irrational extremism, lies the clue to Leo's success. 
The influence of Manichseism was not confined to the obscene 
sect which cultivated immorality both in its dogma and its 
ceremonial, its taint is to be felt throughout the teaching of the 
Church at this period ; in the extravagant adulation of celibacy, 
as in the excesses of ascetic mortification — even, it has been 
said, in the writings of St. Augustine himself — the dignity of the 
body suffers from the artificial conception of material evil. 
Leo's line of action was not, however, in advance of his age in 
this or in any other direction : his instinctive practical genius 
recoiled from extravagance of any kind, condemning alike 
Catholics whose fasts were an end in themselves and not merely 



24 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

a means of grace, and Manichseans who disregarded all moral 
obligation for self- discipline. 

Towards Eutychianism — the other important heretical contest 
of Leo's pontificate — his attitude was different. Eutyches was a 
follower 'of Cyril, and his doctrine grew out of the computation 
of the Nestorian heresy. So anxious was he to assert the perfect 
divinity of the infant Christ, that he was led to deny the twofold 
nature of the Saviour. It was essentially an Eastern controversy, 
both locally and typically, and Leo showed no disposition to 
interfere until he was appealed to by both parties as a matter of 
course. Eastern theology had become fatally bound up with the 
politics of the Imperial Court, and the conspicuous lack of dignity 
which characterises the Eutychian controversy shows how far 
the Church of the Eastern Empire had deteriorated since the days 
of Constantino and Arius. The so-called " Robber Council " of 
Ephesus, summoned in 449 by the Emperor under Eutychian 
influences, reinstated Eutyches, and deposed his noble antag- 
onist, Flavian, who died of the effects of ill-treatment at the 
hands of the lawless heretical monks. This had been done in 
flagrant disregard of the protests of Hilary, the Roman legate 
who represented Leo at Ephesus. Leo's indignation knew no 
bounds, and in 451, the Council of Chalcedon gave him his 
opportunity for retaliation. The death of the Emperor 
Theodosius in 450, and the accession of his able sister Pulcheria 
was the immediate cause of a reaction in favour of the anti- 
Eutychian party. At Chalcedon, Leo's famous " Tome," which 
had been tumultuously suppressed at Ephesus, was read amidst 
the acclamations of the congregation — " Accursed be he that 
admits not that Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo " ! A 
more solid triumph was the formal Canonical recogn tion of the 
supremacy of Rome, although it was significantly ascribed solely 
to the imperial rights of the city. 

Leo's "Tome" marks an epoch in the history of papal 
ascendancy as an act of papal definition, which carries authority 
as a matter of course — violently suppressed for this reason by 
the party asainst whom it is levelled, and welcomed as a final 
and authoritative confirmation of their triumph by the champions 
of orthodoxy. In itself, the " Tome " was characteristic of Leo — 
asserting with emphasis the simplicity of the truth, and ignoring 
as unworthy of notice the Oriental subtleties involved in the 
basis of error. 

In the war against heresy, the Papacy was triumphantly 
vindicated by Leo's activities. He did not relax his vigour in 
the more debatable sphere of political supremacy. In the 



LEO THE GKEAT: THE HUNS AND VANDALS 25 

so-called " birthday sermons," preached on the feasts of SS. Peter 
and Paul, Leo clearly sets forth his conception of the papal 
office, in terms which do not attempt to mitigate the absolutism 
implied, or to gloss over any of the consequences of its recognition. 
He grounds the Papal authority on the supremacy of St. Peter, 
for whom he claims a distinct overlordship among the Apostles. 
The imperial title of the city he waives as a mere symbol : " the 
Apostles it is who have brought thee to such a height of glory " — 
not Csesar, who merely paved the way for the larger dominion of 
Christ. The Papacy is thus raised above the status of a 
patriarchate, and the Pope is no longer primus inter pares, but 
mediator between Christ and the Apostles. It might seem 
almost as if the uncompromising assertions of Leo courted a 
challenge ; at anyrate he cannot have been altogether surprised 
at the sudden defiance of his antagonist. Hilary of Aries. 
Hilary was a worthy champion of the opposition, combining the 
qualities of sanctity and ambition in the degree in which they 
are often found in the great militant Churchman of history. He 
seems to have held vague metropolitan rights in Gaul, which he 
was ambitious of extending — a project which brought him into 
conflict with Celidonius, Bishop of an out-lying diocese over 
which Hilary claimed rights of jurisdiction. Both Bishops 
appealed to Leo — Celidonius. as a suppliant; Hilary, as a 
claimant of rights which had been infringed. Leo declared in 
favour of Celidonius and summoned a Council of Bishops to 
condemn Hilary, upon which Hilary boldly defied the authority 
of the Bishop of Rome, denying any limitation to his own 
metropolitan rights. The partisanship of the respective chron- 
iclers of Leo and Hilary has wrapped the end of the quarrel in 
obscurity. Whether Hilary submitted in penitent dignity to 
apostolic reproof, or whether he was overawed by papal anathema, 
is uncertain ; the facts, at least, testify to Leo's actual triumph, 
while they leave the moral issues indecisive. Celidonius was 
righted, and Hilary condemned first by a synod of Bishops, and 
afterwards by an imperial decree which subordinated Gaul 
completely to the Papacy, and thus extinguished the first flicker 
of the flame of Gallican independence. 

The conflict between Leo and Hilary is typical of a series of 
less important contests by which Leo made the theory of spiritual 
empire an actual fact. Aquiieia, Alexandria, and Illyria — all 
debatable ground — were reduced from a vague dependence to a 
definite allegiance to the "universal dominion, of Peter". 
Priscillianism was persecuted in Spain by papal authority, and 
in Leo's letters to refractory Bishops, infallibility is foreshadowed 
in many an audacious expression of divine right. 



*f 



26 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

Leo had already shown his qualities of leadership in two 
aspects — as the champion of orthodoxy, and as the defender of 
petrarchal claims — before he stood out in his third and greatest 
capacity, as a national hero. The legend-loving piety of the 
primitive imagination, as well as the poetic genius of Raphael, 
has done an injustice to the simple heroism which led Leo to 
the camp of Attila, on the banks of the Mincio. The terror of 
the degenerate Romans at the coming of the Huns, enhanced as 
it was by their " inhuman " appearance and the remarkable 
military qualities of their leader, reached its zenith as they 
watched the plundering march through Friuli, and saw the 
doom approaching which the " scourge of God " — a second and 
more terrible Alaric — threatened to lay upon the city. 

Now as never before, Rome stood in need of a saviour, and 
her need was Leo's opportunity. Accompanied by the consul 
Arienus, and the ex-prefect Trigetius, he set out at the head of 
an embassy, which the Emperor and Senate had initiated rather 
as a counsel of despair than as a hopeful expedient for the 
deliverance of the city. Many causes have been alleged for the 
withdrawal of Attila independent of Leo's embassy : he was old 
and already stricken with the disease which killed him within a 
year from the time — his army was spent, and his ambition 
satiated by the siege and sack of Aquileia. Moreover, he had 
not recovered from defeat at the renowned battle of the 
Catalaunian Fields, since when he had been troubled with 
portents and auguries which had shaken his faith in his own 
mission. These things may have helped Leo, but they cannot 
supersede his claim to have effected the salvation of Rome. 
His interview with Attila was brief but momentous, and history 
knows nothing of it but its results. In spite of the attempts to 
give, on the one hand, a prosaic interpretation of the withdrawal 
of Attila, and, on the other, to supply it with a miraculous origin, 
the heroism of Leo and the gratitude due to him remain 
unimpaired by either the scruples of historical enquiry or the 
imaginative fiction, which Raphael has immortalised in his 
representation of Attila menaced by SS. Peter and Paul. 

Three years later, Leo again took on himself the defence of 
the city by another embassy to another barbarian leader — 
the Vandal Genseric. The enterprise was more desperate, and in 
its achievement less successful. The spell of Christian civilisa- 
tion could not appeal with the same force to the conquering 
Vandal within sight of his goal, as to the disheartened Hunnish 
chief with all Italy lying between him and Rome. Genseric, 
moreover, had diplomacy on his side, and all the advantages of 



LEO THE GKEAT : THE HUNS AND VANDALS 27 

an ugly palace intrigue to help him. He came as the declared 
opponent of the tyrant Maximus, and the champion of the ex- 
empress and her wrongs, and there was no question of buying 
him off with tribute, as in the earlier crisis in which Leo had 
delivered Rome. With Rome and her riches open to the gaze of 
Genseric — her prestige broken and her power of resistance 
null — it was useless for Leo to attempt to ward off the Vandal 
sack with the weapons of peace. But when the blow fell, and 
the barbarian hordes poured into the city, the debt of Rome to 
its patriot-bishop was felt in a considerable mitigation of the 
horrors of pillage. But, in spite of Leo's efforts, the Vandal sack 
remains a byword for indiscriminate plunder: all that Alaric 
had left undone, Genseric proceeded to carry out, and the lowest 
depths of humiliation, which half a century of barbarian 
invasion had left unsounded, were reserved for Rome to 
experience at the hands of the Vandal pirates. 

Leo lived just long enough to witness the fruitless efforts of 
Majorian to recover the lost energy of the Romans, and in 
461 he died, in the same year as the Emperor, his only noble 
contemporary, who shared with him the Roman qualities of 
disinterested self-sacrifice. 



CHAPTER V 
GOTHIC RULE, a.d. 461-568 

THE importance of the century following the death of 
Leo in the history of the Papacy is political rather than 
personal. There are on the one hand no very distin- 
guished occupants of the Holy See, and on the other hand events 
of the most crucial importance follow each other with bewilder- 
ing rapidity. The extinction of the Western Roman Empire, 
the rise of the Gothic kingdom, the re-conquest of Italy by 
Byzantine-Roman arms, and the coming of the forces of 
disruption in the Lombard settlement of the North — these in 
turn monopolise the history of Rome, and effect the final 
transformation of the ancient world into the Middle Ages, while 
the Papacy, as yet unconscious of victory, pursues its even way 
in undisturbed self-confidence. 

Thus, when in 476 — fifteen years after the death of Leo — 
the boy-Emperor Romulus Augustulus abdicated at the 
dictation of his Major-Domo, Odoacer, and the Empire of 
the West exchanged its last Csesar for the rule of a German 
official, the reigning Pope makes no comment. It really made 
very little difference. The position of the Bishop was much 
the same whether Rome was ruled by a titular Emperor 
under the domination of a Gothic military leader, or by the 
same barbarian claiming to represent the absentee Emperor of 
the East. So at least thought Simplicius (468-483) as he watched 
with apparent indifference the confusion which attended the 
short reigns of the ill-starred Emperors who followed each other 
in rapid succession, until the resignation of Augustulus. The 
Roman Empire might have deserved a less inglorious end, and a 
panegyric might well have seemed out of place ; moreover, 
Simplicius was himself absorbed in a quarrel with the Bishop of 
Constantinople, which no doubt appeared of greater moment 
than the dynastic misfortunes of the degenerate Imperial House. 
So the Roman Empire passed away, unwept by its citizens, who 
failed to trace in its fall the glories of its wonderful past, and 

33 



GOTHIC EULE 29 

unsaluted by the power which was to inherit its sway in the 
future, already foreshadowed in the steady growth of the 
spiritual dominion. 

Perhaps the temporal prosperity of the Papacy was in some 
measure responsible for this detached interest displayed by the 
Popes in home politics. It must at this period have been 
extremely rich, for Hilary of Sardinia (Pope 461-465) is recorded 
to have spent fabulous sums in the restoration of buildings which 
had been destroyed in the Vandal sack. At anyrate, the quarrel 
with the East looms far larger on the papal horizon than the poli- 
tical vicissitudes of Rome, and for more than thirty-five years 
the attention of the Popes is distracted from the critical condition 
of Italian affairs. The cause of hostility was a characteristic 
combination of doctrinal controversy and personal rivalry. The 
two main contentions centre round the usurpations of Acacius 
of Constantinople, who had assumed the title of " Mother of all 
Christians of the orthodox religion," and the Emperor Zeno's 
attempts to settle the monophysite heresy by an act of imperial 
definition. Simplicius opened the breach by excommunicating 
Acacius, and his successor Felix III. widened it by condemning 
the " Henoticon " of Zeno. The lengths to which schismatic strife 
was prepared to go is illustrated by the posthumous reputation 
of Pope Anastasius — a man of peace, who in 496 shrank from 
anathematising the dead Acacius — "Felix and Acacius are now 
both before a higher tribunal. Leave them," he pleaded, "to 
that unerring judgment ". For this latitudinarian sentiment 
the gentle Anastasius forfeited his canonisation in the "Liber 
Pontificalis," and Dante, nearly seven centuries later, confirms 
the verdict by describing him in the "Inferno". The quarrel 
dwindled on until the accession of the orthodox Emperor 
Justin, who is content to sacrifice the memory of Acacius to 
papal execration, unlike his more obdurate predecessor whose 
death at the age of 88 was somewhat groundlessly ascribed by 
the papal party to the vengeance of Heaven for his champion- 
ship of the memory of the- Bishop. 

Meanwhile, the peace-policy of Pope Anastasius, so far from 
restoring unity between East and West, had merely created 
schism in the Papacy itself. On his death in 498, the See was 
contested by Symmachus and Lawrence, who claimed to 
represent the no-compromise and the peace-party respectively. 
Theodoric the Goth had meanwhile supplanted Odoacer and 
established his beneficent rule in Italy, in professed dependence 
on the nominal suzerainty of the Eastern Emperor. To Theodoric, 
renowned alike for political justice and for religious tolerance, 



30 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

both Symmachus and Lawrence appealed, and the Gothic king 
gave the decision in favour of Symmachus, who boasted the 
advantages of an earlier consecration and a greater number of 
votes than his rival. In spite of the confirmation of this verdict 
by the so-called Palmary Synod in 501, Lawrence and his faction 
continued to be troublesome until the year 514, and when at 
last the schism died down, Symmachus showed his gratitude by 
adorning the already magnificent Church of St. Peter with 
marble, and building an "Episcopia" or Bishop's house, thus 
entitling him to be called the founder of the Vatican. 

Symmachus was succeeded in 514 by Hormesdas, whose 
pontificate is chiefly famous for the termination of the Mono- 
physite schism. The same Emperor Justin, whose orthodoxy 
healed the breach, created fresh trouble by a decree against 
Arianism, which was probably intended as a direct blow at the 
authority of the over-mighty vassal King of Italy. The religious 
policy of Theodoric was worthy of his admirable ruling 
capacities. His Arianism did not stand in the way of his justice 
to Catholicism, and he never felt the slightest temptation to 
persecute. The splendid defence of toleration with which he 
met the edict of Justin is a standing monument to the greatness 
of his mental vision — "To pretend to a dominion over the 
conscience," he says in his letter to Justin, " is to usurp the 
prerogative of God : by the nature of things the power of 
sovereigns is confined to political government; they have no 
right of punishment but over those who disturb the public 
peace; the most dangerous heresy is that of a sovereign who 
separates himself from part of his subjects because they believe 
not according to his belief". Such a noble expression of opinion 
deserved a more generous reception than was accorded to it 
by the Emperor Justin, especially when it was delivered by an 
ambassador of no less dignity than the Bishop of Rome himself. 
In spite of protests and excuses, John I. had been forced by 
Theodoric to undertake an unwelcome journey to Constantinople, 
and to plead for Arian toleration with the Emperor, to whose 
rigid orthodoxy the Papacy owed its victory in the monophysite 
struggle so lately terminated. The Emperor left nothing to be 
desired in the outward deference with which he treated the 
Pope : he knelt at his feet and processed with him through the 
glittering streets of new Rome. But, whether through the half- 
heartedness of John or the politic orthodoxy of Justin, the 
embassy failed in its main object, and the persecuting edict 
remained unrepealed. The Pope paid the penalty for defeat by an 
ignominious death in captivity at the hands of Theodoric, and in 



GOTHIC EULE 31 

recognition of his sufferings the " Liber Pontificalis " affords him 
the honour of canonisation. 

John I. was succeeded by Felix IV., the nominee of Theodoric, 
whose growing absolutism had neither increased his popularity 
nor improved his character. In the same year (526) Theodoric 
died, leaving his kingdom exposed to the fatal perils of a 
minority and the regency of his able but imprudent daughter. 

The reign of Theodoric forms an epoch in the history of 
Italy, a momentary relief amid the storm-clouds which stretch 
before and after — when the avenging hand seems for an instant 
stayed, and Rome, the poverty-stricken and siege-worn victim of 
her relentless doom, is " Felix Roma " once more. It is true that 
dark deeds stain the hero's path — deeds of treachery, such as 
the murder of Odoacer ; of despotic self-will, in his treatment of 
Pope John — and above all the promptings of a yet more 
barbarous suspicion, which darken the close of his career, by the 
imprisonment and death of the philosopher Boethius. And yet, 
Theodoric the Ostrogoth is among the wisest and best rulers 
that Italy has ever known. Great in his aims — the unification 
of Italy under the dynasty of the Amal — great in his achieve- 
ments, the revival of law and order in his distracted dominion, 
he stands out as the first of the founders of modern Italy, and 
his failure to establish an enduring unity cannot be taken as the 
measure of his success. His attempt was in one sense prema- 
ture, for Italy had not yet realised her need ; in another sense, 
it was too late, for it required as the imperative condition of its 
success the co-operation of the Papacy, and the Popes had 
already learnt that their personal autocracy was best assured in 
the absence of any effective civil authority, independent of, or 
superior to their own. The great moments of the Papacy had 
hitherto been moments of crisis in periods of stress and storm. 
The pontificate of Innocent had coincided with the invasion of 
Alaric ; Leo the Great had stood face to face with Attila the 
Hun, and he alone had saved Rome from the worst horrors of 
the Vandal sack. His successors had yet to learn that spiritual 
weapons unsupported by temporal force may avail for a moment 
to avert a political catastrophe, but they cannot suffice to 
preserve the independence of national existence against the 
steady opposition of a determined rival, in long stretches of 
peace and repose. 

During the ten years which followed the death of Theodoric, 
the Gothic kingdom fell to pieces, and the Popes at first 
welcomed the change from the respectful despotism of Theodoric 
to the magnanimous weakness of the regent Amalasuntha. The 



32 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Arianism of the House of Theodoric, which prevented any close 
alliance with the Papacy, gave at the same time an advantage to 
the Roman Bishop, by raising him to the position of intermediary 
between the ruling House and the Eastern Emperor. Moreover, 
Theodoric had latterly fixed his seat of government at Ravenna, 
thus leaving Rome to the Pope. To these advantages was now 
added, in the pontificate of Felix IV., a judicial supremacy, 
according to which the Pope was given the power to determine 
all cases between the clergy and the laity. But in spite of the 
fact that the position of the Popes under the House of Theodoric 
was a strong one, we find them already looking towards the 
East for deliverance. Already they turned to the foreigner over 
the seas, as later they sought a protector beyond the Alps, to 
save them from the ruler on the spot — the defender within 
their gates, whose ever-present authority was irksome, even when 
it lavished favours on its exacting protege. 

The Emperor Justinian was more than ready to listen to the 
complaints of the Pope, groundless as they were, and throughout 
the reign of Theodatus a policy of intrigue with the East was 
handed down from each Bishop to his successor. John II. 
(532-535) received a magnificent embassy bearing gifts and ac- 
companied by a message of protest against the alleged misdoing 
of Theodatus. John's aged successor, Agapetus, was sent to 
Constantinople by Theodatus to convey in polite terms the 
Gothic king's defiance : like his predecessor in similar circum- 
stances, he was received with the utmost possible deference, but 
the political issues soon became swamped in a theological 
contention, and Agapetus died, covered with controversial glory. 

The pontificate of Silverius (536) saw the arrival of Belisarius, 
and the overthrow of Theodatus the Goth. Silverius with short- 
sighted enthusiasm threw wide the gates of Rome and welcomed 
the deliverer who came under the banner of the Roman Empire. 
He made himself the tool of the Byzantine conqueror, only to 
fall a victim to the intrigues of the Imperial Court. Belisarius 
brought in his train a certain Vigilius, an ecclesiastical advent- 
urer of extraordinary ability and boundless ambition. Vigilius 
had accompanied Agapetus on his embassy to Constantinoplej 
where he entered into an unscrupulous bargain with the 
Empress Theodora, whose influence dominated Justinian and 
his Empire. The contention of Agapetus had been directed 
against a protege-bishop of Theodora's, who had been accused of 
Eutychian opinions, and had refused to declare his allegiance to 
the Council of Chalcedon. Theodora was bent on restoring the 
suspected heretic to the See of Constantinople to which he had 



GOTHIC EULE 33 

been nominated. She therefore summoned Vigilius, who under- 
took to recognise the heretic Anthinus, and, further, to repudiate 
himself the Council of Chalcedon, which practically pledged 
him to Eutychian opinions. His compensation was to be no less 
than the Roman pontificate, as soon as the arms of Belisarius 
could procure it for him, and the overthrow of Silverius create 
a vacancy. No sooner was Belisarius safely established in the 
city than flimsy charges of transactions with the Goths were 
brought forward against the unfortunate Silverius. The charges 
were supported by the dramatic display of Theodora's second 
accomplice, the wife of Belisarius. " Tell us, Pope Silverius," 
she asked, as she lay on her couch with the conqueror at her 
feet, "What have we and the Romans done, that you should 
wish to give us up into the hands of the Goths " ? Dumbfounded 
at the preposterous charges, Silverius failed to exculpate him- 
self, and the interested populace was briefly informed that 
"Pope Silverius was deposed and had become a monk". 

Vengeance was not long in overtaking Vigilius, who proved 
unable to win the favour of the Roman people by acting as their 
benefactor during the siege of the city by the Gothic Vitiges. 
Moreover, he unwisely broke with Constantinople, by refusing to 
support the Emperor in his condemnation of the so-called 
11 Three Chapters ". This was a well-meant but misguided attempt 
of Justinian's to secure uniformity by condemning the writings 
of three priests who had previously been acquitted of heresy by 
the Council of Chalcedon. Vigilius was peremptorily summoned 
to Constantinople, and in 446 he left Rome amid the execrations 
of his disaffected flock. "Evil hast thou done to us!" they 
cried after him, "May evil follow thee wherever thou art!" 
The story of his doings in Constantinople is an ignominious 
page of papal history. He first submitted to imperial terrorism, 
and condemned the "Three Chapters". Then, finding himself 
deserted by the Western Bishops, he anathematised Justinian's 
usurpation of ecclesiastical authority. Thus, having alienated 
the Eastern Bishops, who refused to have any dealings with him, 
he took sanctuary and suffered indignities which extorted the 
contemptuous pity of his adversaries. After more vacillations, 
he was confirmed by the support of seventeen Western Bishops 
in his opposition to the Emperor, at the fifth quasi-oecumenical 
Council in 553, venturing so far as to write a defence of the " Three 
Chapters " in answer to Justinian's attack. Finally, in exile on 
the rock of Proconnosus, he again recanted, and after a full 
submission to the Emperor was suffered to set out for Rome, 
which he did not reach alive. 
3 



34 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

The career of Vigilius proves that the Papacy was still a 
purely moral institution, which must stand or fall according as 
the Bishops prove worthy or unworthy of their calling. It proves 
also that the yoke of Byzantium was in reality more fatal to its 
growth than the domination of the Goths. 

While Vigilius was suffering his inglorious martyrdom at the 
hands of Justinian, a more heroic drama was being enacted 
round the walls of old Rome. The meteor-like career of Totila, 
the young Gothic Hannibal, lives in history to disprove the 
charges brought against the Goths by prejudiced chroniclers of 
the Middle Ages, who passed down to our own day the fiction 
that the Goths were the destroyers of Rome. It is true that the 
city suffered a time of almost unparallelled distress when in 546 
the young conqueror besieged it for more than a year ; it is true, 
moreover, that Totila in the heat of contest threatened to " turn 
the whole city into pasture for cattle ". But the threat was never 
carried out, and Rome suffered no worse mutilation than the 
destruction of a part of her walls. The deacon, Pelagius, taking 
to himself the role of Innocent and Leo in the absence of their 
unworthy representative, appealed in vain for a reprieve during 
the siege : on the entry of Totila, he confronted him again on 
the threshold of St. Peter's, and with a humility born of pastoral 
pity, he pleaded for the city — "Lord, spare thine own". 

"Comest thou then as a suppliant, Pelagius ?" asked 
Totila. 

" God has made me thy servant : therefore spare, O my Lord, 
thy servants " — answered the priest. 

Further appeal was probably unnecessary to move the heart 
of the chivalrous young king, but had Pelagius not prevailed, it 
would have been hard to turn a deaf ear to the dignified 
pleading of Belisarius against the destruction of the buildings. 
"Such an outrage," he wrote, "would rob our ancestors of the 
monuments of their virtues and posterity of the sight of their 
works. . . . Art thou victor ? destroying her thou wilt not lose 
the city of another, but thine own. Preserving her thou wilt 
enrich thyself with the most splendid possession of the earth." 

Totila paid the price of his clemency on the field of Taginas, 
where he died a hero's death before the walls of the city which 
he had forborn to destroy, and which in consequence he had 
twice proved unable to hold. His death closes the period of the 
Gothic wars, and ushers in the new era. Five sieges and five 
sacks had left their mark on the city, which had sunk into a 
state of social chaos and economic despair. The Pragmatic 
Sanction of Justinian (554) was a noble attempt to restore its 



GOTHIC KULE 35 

fallen prosperity, but Rome had sunk into a state from which a 
code was powerless to save it, and we read with a certain pathos 
the statutory provision for the payment by the starving city 
of grammarians, rhetoricians, and legists, " in order that youth 
trained in the liberal sciences may nourish in the Roman 
Empire ". 

In spite of the insidious dangers of Byzantine despotism, the 
Papacy reaped considerable advantage from the results of the 
Gothic wars. The overthrow of the Arian dynasty was naturally 
the triumph of orthodoxy, and the removal from Italy of the 
independent Gothic kingdom released the Popes from an 
unwelcome curb on their independence. More definite were the 
advantages bestowed by Justinian's legislation, which transferred 
the plenary civil power to the Pope with the assistance of the 
Senate. There could be no question henceforth that the Pope 
was the chief ruler in Rome, and his authority in the city was 
so well and so soon established that neither the Byzantine 
exarch, or viceroy, from his seat at Ravenna, nor his local 
representative, the Ducatus Romanus, could seriously compete 
with him in the years to come. 

Pelagius, the deacon, succeeded Vigilius as Pope in 555. but it 
is disappointing to see that after the noble activity which he 
showed in his meetings with Totila, he goes out to Constantinople, 
heaps up riches, which it is true he spends lavishly in Rome, 
and in spite of an oath of purgation, he never entirely clears 
himself from the suspicion of having been cognisant of the 
death of Vigilius. He was succeeded by John III., whose 
pontificate coincides with the first appearance of the Lombards 
in North Italy, and the gathering of the clouds for a new and 
terrible storm. The Pope is said to have averted the doom of 
Italy by an embassy of conciliation to the fallen exarch Narses, 
who from his sullen retreat in Naples was said to be plotting 
vengeance with the Northern invaders and their king, Alboin. 
It was only a momentary reprieve : the " swords of the 
Lombards " were never for long at rest in their scabbards, and 
the terror of their name spread a new panic through Italy. For 
there was a new persistency in their movements, unlike any- 
thing to which Italy had hitherto been subjected among all the 
invasions of the barbarians. Alaric had swept through Italy 
sowing disaster and withdrawn ; Attila had plundered the North, 
and fallen back in awe before Leo and the might of the Lord ; 
the Vandals had wreaked their piratical vengeance in one fell 
swoop on Rome, and carried their plunder away over the sea 
never to return ; and the Ostrogoths had tarried in peace and 






36 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

justice among the Romans until the jealousy of the Emperor 
drove them forth. But the Lombards brought their wives and 
children, and settled in the fertile valley of the Po. They 
murdered their enemies and made their skulls into drinking- 
cups. They had no fear of the Unseen, and no reverence for 
priests. They alone among the devastators of the fallen Empire 
seem utterly destitute of all qualities of nobility, and by their 
cruelty, their treachery, and their lack of rudimentary personal 
honour, leave no room for any kind of admiration. And yet, 
they alone of the barbarian tribes gained a permanent foothold 
in Italy and achieved an ultimate union of race. 



CHAPTER VI 

MORAL SUPREMACY : THE EPOCH OF GREGORY THE GREAT 

a.d. 568-604 

WHILE Italy lay prostrate under the vengeance of the 
Goth, the fury of the Lombard, and the tyranny of 
Byzantium, the freshening spirit of a new monasti- 
cism breathed from the groves of Subiaco and spread to the 
heights of Monte Cassino. It is often the case that a time of 
acute distress endows men with unusual powers of vision, and a 
period of turmoil not infrequently produces a reaction of 
spiritual force. It is therefore not altogether surprising that 
the sixth century should have produced two such men as 
St. Benedict and St. Gregory. 

The monastic ideal of St. Benedict was founded on the con- 
templative mysticism of Jerome, and was adapted to meet the 
needs of Western Christendom by the suppression of exotic ex- 
travagance and the infusion of practical organisation. The life of 
spiritual retirement and simple manual labour had an irresistible 
attraction for those whose characters were too gentle for these 
hard times, and the personality of Benedict spread its influence 
wherever the spell of holiness could be exercised. From the 
metropolis of Monte Cassino, the Benedictine rule radiated 
throughout Italy, until every unsequestered district and many a 
mountain fastness held in its unpretentious religious house a 
silent witness to the Gospel of peace. 

The spread of monasticism was not without its importance 
in the history of papal power. The new monasteries — unlike 
their predecessors in their strong corporate life, and their 
industrial efficiency — were the outposts of the spiritual dominion 
as the military colonies had been of the Empire. Foremost 
among their ranks were the young Roman nobles — portionless 
boys and undowered girls, whose fathers had fallen in the 
barbarian wars, as well as the more fortunate young aristocrats, 
who lavished their wealth on the houses which sheltered them, 
and purchased by their renunciation the straight and open way 
of eternal happiness. 

Such was the youthful Gregory, the scion of an Imperial 

37 



38 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

House, from which he inherited the graces of Roman nobility- 
combined with an exceptional spiritual tradition. "A saint 
among saints," as he is described by John the Deacon, his youth 
was spent in the decadent Roman world, which claimed his 
talents and his abnormal endowments, but never won his soul. 
Of singular personal beauty, which he inherited from both his 
father and his mother, he dressed with a splendour befitting his 
station, and lived the ordinary life of the young Roman noble, 
until the death of his father in 573. He was no sudden 
conversion from a life of pleasure to the life of the cloister. As 
long as his father lived, possibly in obedience to the parental 
will, he had thrown himself heart and soul into the career which 
had been designed for him, rising before the age of thirty to the 
responsible office of prsetor of Rome. 

But he had striven always to " live to God," and throughout 
his gay youth the example of Benedict lay deep-hidden in 
his soul. When at last the moment came, and Gregory, still in 
his early manhood, became his own master, he turned calmly 
away from the world, which had never attracted him, to that 
serener life which appealed no more in vain. He did not at 
first repudiate altogether the claims of secular life, contenting 
himself with filling his father's villa with the monastic guests 
whom he delighted to honour. Thus gradually and by slow 
degrees he severed the bonds which held him back, until he 
adopted first the rule and then the habit of the Benedictines 
himself, and finally converted the Roman villa into the monastery 
of St. Andrews. With the rest of his patrimony he endowed six 
monasteries in Sicily, and gave alms on the lavish and indis- 
criminate scale which his warm heart dictated. His Roman 
pride, his political activity, his humanistic leanings — all became 
submerged in the austerities of the Benedictine rule, but the 
soul of the mystic blossomed into joy in the spiritual garden of 
St. Andrews, and in the years which followed, his heart never 
swerved from its first enthusiastic allegiance to the life of the 
cloister. Playing on a favourite metaphor which recurs again 
and again in his writings, he describes the world as a rough sea, 
and the monastery as a calm haven, where " the ship of the 
soul " is at rest. " My unhappy mind remembers what it was in 
the cloister," he writes as Pope in the preface to the " Dialogues " 
— " How it soared above fleeting things because it thought only of 
things celestial. ... I ponder on what I now endure ; I ponder 
on what I have lost. For lo ! now I am shaken by the waves of 
a great sea, and in the ship of the mind I am dashed by the 
storms of a strong tempest." 



MOKAL SUPKEMACY 39 

There is a general vagueness as to the dates of the earlier 
events in Gregory's life, but after a comparatively short spell of 
monastic retirement he was called back to politics at the bidding 
of Pope Benedict, and sent on an embassy to Constantinople 
as papal ambassador (Apocrisiarius). It is uncertain how long 
he stayed there, but in the course of his sojourn he managed to 
reconcile Benedict's successor, Pelagius, with two successive 
emperors, Tiberius and Maurice, with whom relations had been 
strained. He failed, however, in the other object of his mission, 
which was to extract aid from the emperor against the Lombards, 
from whom Rome was in imminent danger of unprecedented 
evil. 

Gregory was not wholly absorbed in his diplomatic errand. 
While he was in Constantinople, he engaged in a characteristic 
controversy with one Eutychius on the Resurrection body, and 
wrote at the solicitation of his friends a remarkable commentary 
on Job. But the " Magna Moralia " is only accidentally a com- 
mentary : it is really an expression in fantastic imagery of 
Gregory's own views on the moral and religious problems of his 
age. It is an ambitious but not a great work, either from the 
literary or the theological standpoint ; he had no knowledge of 
any of the Oriental languages, and had only read his author in 
the garbled Latin version. He accepts his visionary utterances 
as literal history, and the beauty of his language never so much 
as occurs to him. But it is the work of a great man — simple 
enough to accept great teaching with unquestioning faith, and 
generous enough to find in it the satisfaction of the needs of the 
whole world. 

Nor was the inner life of the soul neglected in the stress of 
ecclesiastical politics. With the little company of friends who 
had followed him from Rome, he used to hold spiritual 
converse, and " to retire to their society from the constant storm 
of business as to a safe port bound by their example, as by an 
anchor-cable, to the placid shore of prayer". It was no divided 
allegiance which Gregory gave to the monastic ideal : he 
remained a monk at heart from no merely ascetic motive, nor 
was he driven to the cloister by an over-mastering sense of the 
evil of the world, but in the peace of contemplative religion he 
found his ideal of earthly happiness as well as the fullness of 
mystical joy. And yet the monastic ideal of Gregory is no less 
severe than that of Benedict himself, and his self-discipline was 
sufficiently austere at times to endanger his life and permanently 
to undermine his constitution. When on his return from 
Constantinople he became Abbot of his beloved St. Andrews, 



40 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

his discipline would seem utterly inhuman if it were not 
animated by the same spirit of love which marks all his 
dealings with men. The Gregory who condemns the monk 
Justus to a lonely deathbed as a penance for secreting three 
golden coins is the same man who walks graciously through the 
streets of Rome distributing alms, and with whimsical tenderness 
makes the famous series of puns suggested by the sight of the 
Angle children, whose angel faces inspired him to work for the 
conversion of England. Perhaps the noblest impulse of his life 
was that which drew him away from the monastery which he 
loved — away from the city which hung on his teaching and 
already rang with the praises of his piety — towards the heathen 
land of King EAlle which was to be reclaimed " De-ira " and 
resound with " Alleluiah". A popular tumult led to Gregory's 
return under the compulsion of Pope Pelagius, after three days' 
journeying towards the English shore, but the fact that he never 
reached the kingdom of EAlle does not detract from the 
splendour of his self-oblation. The angel boys had touched the 
heart as well as the imagination of Gregory, and the mission of 
Augustine, which was in truth the outcome of the scene in the 
market-place, immortalises the name of Gregory in the history 
of England. 

In 590, Gregory was again summoned away from St. Andrews 
by the world which could not spare him for a monk. The call 
this time was to the Papacy itself, but it was nearly a year before 
Gregory could be induced to submit to the onerous dignity thus 
thrust upon him. Some such reluctance was traditional — a sort 
of conventional expression of humility which was expected of 
the Bishop-designate by the people who appointed him. It was 
often artificial and sometimes ridiculous, but we know enough 
of Gregory's character to feel certain that his reluctance was 
perfectly sincere. He was leaving a life of sheltered retirement, 
congenial to his extremely sensitive temperament, for an office 
of unparallelled danger and difficulty. To him, the monastic 
life brought fullness of soul, while ecclesiastical politics meant 
contraction. But if it is necessary to prove that no hypocritical 
motives marred the sincerity of Gregory's unworldliness,- his 
attempt to intercept the document applying for the Emperor's 
confirmation of his appointment, and to substitute for it his own 
supplication for its refusal, affords the strongest evidence of its 
genuine character. 

Happily for the history of the Papacy, Gregory was not suc- 
cessful in avoiding the pontificate. Nor when once enthroned 
did he fail to rise to his immense responsibilities; he left the 



MOKAL SUPEEMACY 41 

gracious calm of St. Andrews behind when he said good-bye to 
the monastery, and he put off the monk as completely as he 
adopted the life of the ecclesiastical statesman : but he never 
laid aside the saint. If occasionally he looks wistfully back at 
the monastic garden among the oak-trees of the Coelian Hill, it 
is not with the haunting regrets of a man who has failed but 
with the heart-searchings of an idealist who is conscious of his 
limitations. To the Emperor's pious sister, he writes : " Under 
the colour of the episcopate I have been brought back to the 
world. ... I have lost the joys of my rest, and seem to have 
risen outwardly, while inwardly I have fallen. I lament that 
I am driven far away from my Maker's face. . . . Though for 
myself I fear nothing, I am greatly afraid for those who have 
been committed to me. On all sides I am tossed by the waves 
of business, and pressed down by storms, so that I can say with 
truth, 'I am come into deep waters where the flood overflows 
me'. ... I loved the beauty of the contemplative life, as a 
Rachel, barren, but beautiful and of clear vision, which though 
on account of its quietness it is less productive, yet has a finer 
perception of light. But, by what judgment I know not, Leah 
has been brought to me in the night, to wit, the active life, 
fertile but tender-eyed ; seeing less, though bringing forth more." 
In a different vein he expresses the same consciousness of his 
own deficiencies in answering the felicitations of a friend. " It 
is all very well to make the name the likeness of a thing," he 
writes in affectionate banter, " and to turn neat sentences and 
pretty speeches in your letters, and to call a monkey a lion ; but 
it is just the same thing as we do when we call mangy puppies 
pards or tigers." 

Gregory's apparent self-depreciation was the logical outcome 
of his extraordinarily high conception of the papal office and 
his absolute conviction in the reality of its power. It was less 
a matter of legal right than of practical expediency. Times 
had changed since Leo had found it necessary to insist on an 
extravagant acknowledgment of St. Peter's claims : no one 
wanted to be told that the Pope inherited his supremacy from 
the prince of the Apostles, for everyone knew that the Pope had 
saved Rome three times from the horrors of pillage, and stood 
between the Romans and Byzantine tyranny. So Gregory could 
afford to be less exacting than Leo in demanding the explicit 
acknowledgment of papal supremacy just in so far as his 
authority was a greater reality, resting on a more definite basis 
than that of his predecessors. This is always most noticeable 
in his dealings with Constantinople, and a striking instance 



42 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

occurs at the outset of his pontificate. The new Pope had an 
encounter with certain Bishops of Istria, who had refused to 
condemn the Three Chapters, — an attitude which had by now 
come to be regarded as unorthodox. The Emperor, however, in 
this case, chose to interfere for the protection of the Istrian 
Bishops, and commanded the Pope to withdraw his complaint. 
Gregory instantly submitted in deference to "the commands of 
the most pious princes". Again, in 593, Maurice issued an 
edict forbidding soldiers to become monks during their period 
of office. It might seem a wise enough provision in the face of 
the deadly peril which threatened Rome from the Lombards, 
but it must have been directly against Gregory's most cherished 
convictions, and indeed he felt it sufficiently strongly to send 
a vehement protest to Constantinople while at the same time 
acquiescing in its publication. The protest, while it is forcible 
and severely explicit, is expressed in words which are almost 
servile : " What am I who speak this to my lords but dust and 
a worm ? Nevertheless, feeling that this law is against God the 
Author of all things I cannot be silent." It has to be remem- 
bered, however, in this connection and in others, that extrava- 
gant forms of address to princes were required by the ordinary 
code of good manners. It is difficult to decide exactly how far 
Gregory's attitude to the Emperor, as expressed in his letter, is 
merely dictated by the conformity of a courtier to the conven- 
tional phraseology and how far he was prompted in his submis- 
sion on the various points at issue between him and his temporal 
lord by the reverence for constituted authority which monastic 
obedience had instilled. 

Unhappily, neither of these hypotheses offers any solution of 
the one inexplicable blot on Gregory's pontificate. In 602, the 
Emperor Maurice was assassinated with wanton cruelty by one 
of the worst and most brutal adventurers who ever succeeded 
in establishing a tyranny. In his letter of congratulation to 
Phocas, Gregory shows the only sign of moral deterioration which 
his contact with worldly affairs might have effected. He 'was 
growing old, and the consequences of his early asceticism were 
telling on his physique, but neither bodily weakness nor the 
heat of personal rancour — for he had never been on very good 
terms with Maurice — can adequately excuse his self-abasement 
before the red-handed usurper. " Glory to God in the highest, 
Who as it is written changes times and transfers seasons," he 
ejaculates at the opening of a fulsome eulogy, in which he 
rejoices that "the Benignity of your Piety has been raised to 
the imperial throne." Of course Gregory has an end to serve — 



MOKAL SUPEEMACY 43 

a boon to ask — for the glory of the Papacy, which follows closely 
on the phrases of adulation. But the price was too great : the 
moral example of one of the greatest of the Popes, without this 
one deep stain, would have been of far greater worth to Christen- 
dom and to the world than any favour which it was in the power 
of an Emperor to grant. 

The causes which had embittered Gregory against Maurice 
were many and various. Soon after the edict forbidding soldiers 
to become monks, Maurice interfered in the election of Maxi- 
mus, Bishop of Salona, in Illyricum. Gregory, diplomatic as 
ever, gave way at first, allowed the election of Maximus, and 
received him with honour at the Emperor's request. But, at 
the same time, he appealed to the Empress Constantina, and 
finally — seven years later — extorted an apology and submission 
from the troublesome Bishop. A still more serious affair was 
the quarrel with John the Faster, the Bishop of Constantinople, 
who had taken on himself to punish two heretic priests by the 
uncanonical penalty of flogging. In answer to Gregory's pro- 
test, the Bishop feigned ignorance of the charges brought 
against him. The reply of Gregory throws a new light on his 
character, and illustrates his command of irony, which Dean 
Church has compared to that of Pio Nono. He professes to be- 
lieve that " someone else, a secular person " had addressed him 
in the rame of his " most holy brother". Then, with an 
offensiveness which the delicacy of his trained wit merely 
aggravates, he accuses this fictitious scapegoat of malignantly 
lying, quoting the text intentionally suggestive of the epithet 
by which the Bishop was known : " Not that which goeth 
into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh 
out of the mouth that defileth a man ". There is a note 
of personal rancour in the quarrel, which, in itself, sug- 
gests an open rivalry between Gregory and the Bishop of 
Constantinople. In 595, it came to the surface in a direct 
clash of authority. John the Faster claimed the title of 
" Universal Bishop," and flaunted it in a document addressed to 
the Pope. Gregory disputed the claim with all the vehemence 
of his passionate nature. He takes up the somewhat astonish- 
ing standpoint that any such assumption of priority on the 
part of a Bishop — even the Bishop of Rome — would be an un- 
warrantable usurpation. In his indignation he appeals to the 
Churches of Antioch and Alexandria, claiming that if there 
were any superiority of one over another of the Bishops, to 
them, conjointly with the Bishop of Rome, it ought properly to 
belong. But even the Pope, he alleges, refuses to claim such a 



44 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

title, and he asks the poignant question, what would become of 
the whole Church if it depended on one patriarch, and he be- 
came a heretic? The same question has been asked in more 
advanced ages, and a satisfactory answer is still hard to find. 

The contest is one of great interest, for it shows us the mind 
of the fourth great Father of Christendom on the relative im- 
portance of the Holy See. While he remains firm in supporting 
a certain priority in dignity to the Roman See, he repudiates 
any claim to be set as it were on a higher plane than his brother 
patriarchs. The patriarchal claims he accepts, but he expressly 
shares them with Alexandria and Antioch, as claiming no less 
than Rome to have been "founded on the Rock". Thus 
Gregory may be said to have favoured the idea of a limited 
Popedom, lifted above the clamour of rivalry, and yet unim- 
perilled by the dangerous isolation of infallibility. 

The quarrel with the Bishop of Constantinople was, in itself, 
enough to throw Gregory across the path of the autocratic 
Emperor. But there were still other causes of greater import- 
ance for the moment which produced an open rupture. Maurice 
had at last awakened to the fact that Italy would be demolished 
by the Lombards unless something was done immediately to 
prevent it. A military expedition was out of the question. 
Persia was pressing hard on the East, and new Rome must be 
defended at the expense of the mother city. So Maurice, with 
doubtful policy, turned to the Franks, who, by a century of 
conquest, had consolidated in Gaul a powerful kingdom under 
the enterprising Merovingian dynasty. The Franks, nothing 
loath, swept down across the Alps, and feasted their eyes on the 
rich Lombard plains. But the peril of Rome was not lessened by 
the introduction of fresh barbarian hordes, and Gregory availed 
himself of the accession of a Catholic Lombard queen to make 
peace with her husband, King Agilulf. It was not a moment to 
think of diplomatic formality, or to pause for higher sanction : 
Ariulf, Duke of Spoleto, was waiting at the gates of Rome, and 
the situation demanded the decisive action of a strong man with 
a determined will. So Gregory made peace on his own responsi- 
bility, and induced Ariulf to retire. In 593, the exarch Ro- 
manus broke the treaty which had been made without his 
sanction, and Rome was once more besieged. Gregory, thwarted 
in his patriotic efforts, took to the pulpit, and gave utterance to 
the despair which he could no longer suppress — " Let us end 
worldly desires, at least with the end of the world," he cries, in 
the belief that the day of doom was at hand. " Let no man 
blame me if henceforth I speak to you no more; for, as you 



MOEAL SUPEEMACY 45 

all see, our tribulations have increased, we are everywhere 
surrounded by perils, everywhere is imminent danger of 
death; some return to us with their hands lopped off, others 
are reported to us as captured or slain. Now am I forced 
to refrain my tongue from exposition, for my soul is weary 
of life". The tone of his preaching is, however, deceptive. 
Thwarted by the exarch, who seems to have had private ends 
to serve in prolonging the war. and suspected at Constantinople 
of " simplicity," Gregory still struggled to obtain some mitigation 
of the sufferings of his flock. In spite of an offensive letter 
from Maurice, which extorted a stinging reply from the Pope, 
Gregory left no stone unturned which might serve the cause of 
peace. Such brief spaces of respite as relieve the terrible story 
of the Lombard oppression owe their origin entirely to the 
unaided efforts and the dauntless energy of Gregory. By 
appealing from the suspicious Emperor to his more reasonable 
wife, he managed to conclude a truce with King Agilulf in 595, 
and another in 603, again through the agency of the Catholic 
Queen Theodolinda. It was not the fault of the Pope that peace 
was not established on a firmer basis and on more durable lines. 
What the dualism between Byzantine and papal rule in Italy 
made it impossible to achieve,. Gregory successfully contrived in 
other ways and by other means to bring about. He wrote 
fatherly letters to Theodolinda, dealing tenderly with her 
lingering Arian prejudices, and exhorting her to strengthen the 
conversion of Agilulf. The result was that gradually the leaven 
of orthodoxy spread from the royal household through the bar- 
barian ranks of the Lombard settlers, till the bond of religious 
unity paved the way for the closer bond of nationality which 
finally made the Teutonic conquerors one with the Romans in 
the inseparable union of race. 

For all these things history acknowledges its debt to Gregory 
the Great, who dignified statecraft by his loftiness of spirit, and 
gave to the Papacy a splendid pattern for a political Pope. But 
it was to Gregory the saint, the "Pastor Pastorum," that the 
men of the Middle Ages turned with affectionate gratitude when 
they called him Father. In dealing with clerical abuses, he keeps 
a happy mean between aggression and laxity. He spared one old 
Bishop who removed his neighbour's landmark, and answered 
good-humouredly the excuses of another who had been accused 
of living too well. On the other hand, he condemned " Simony " 
wherever he detected it as "the first and worst of heresies," 
and showed uncompromising severity against licence and im- 
morality among the Clergy. It is not difficult to understand 



46 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

the extraordinary attraction which was exercised by the " im- 
perious saint". As is common with men who are endowed 
with singular gifts of friendship, he made great demands of his 
fellows, and treated them in return with extraordinary con- 
sideration and sympathy. His letters to Leander of Seville, 
his most intimate friend, are simple and tender and full of good 
fellowship. " I am not now, good man, he whom you used to 
know," he says, in disclaiming the affectionate praises of 
Leander — " I have advanced outwardly, I confess ; but inwardly 
I have fallen. . . . Much does this burdensome honour oppress 
me. . . . Now am I tossed with waves and seek the plank of 
thy intercession, that though not accounted worthy to come rich 
with my ship entire to shore, I may at anyrate reach it on a 
plank after loss." But the friendship between Leander and 
Gregory had a political importance as well, for it was through 
Leander that Gregory bestowed the first privileges on the 
Visigothic Church, on which was founded the traditional loyalty 
of the " Most Catholic Kings " of Spain. 

In spite of his somewhat guarded use of the dogmatic 
claims of the Papacy, Gregory has no hesitation whatever in 
exercising his control over the Church throughout Europe. He 
claimed and exercised an international authority, and, to an 
even greater extent than Leo, created the tradition of a spiritual 
Roman Empire. His relations with Gaul form in themselves a 
complete department of his policy, and his correspondence with 
Queen Brunehild shows that the right of the Pope to correct 
abuses, to arbitrate, and to exercise jurisdiction was reciprocally 
acknowledged, whereas in earlier times the Merovingians had 
not dealt too tenderly with ecclesiastical claims in Gaul. 
Distant Ireland laid her difficulties before him in at least one 
authentic letter from her Apostle, St. Columba. The mission 
of Augustine had been successful beyond all belief in southern 
England, and the seed sown in the slave-market had born ample 
fruitage. 

But absorbed as he was in international affairs, Gregory did 
not neglect his own immediate responsibilities. His household 
was carefully superintended, and the utmost simplicity preserved. 
The Papacy had already accumulated a large quantity of land — 
the patrimony of Peter, as it came to be called — and in its 
proper administration Gregory expended much care and effort. 
He was always careful to protect the peasant and the poor 
farmer from undue exactions, and minute instructions were 
issued to the " Defensores " and sub-deacons to whom the 
actual supervision was entrusted. One of his first and most 



MORAL SUPEEMACY 47 

detailed letters, after becoming Pope, was written to one Peter, 
the Sicilian agent, instructing him to correct certain abuses 
which had crept into the management of the patrimony in 
Sicily. He concludes with the general recommendation — " So 
act that your humility may never be grovelling nor your 
authority overbearing ; but let rectitude give a flavour to your 
humility, and humility make rectitude itself courteous ". The 
same Peter is kept well up to the mark by an occasional rebuke, 
which is often veiled in the ironical eulogy so characteristic of 
Gregory — "I hear from the Abbot Marinianus," he writes, "that 
the building in the Praetorian monastery is not yet half done ; 
what shall I say to this but extol the ardour of your 
experience. ... I hear, too, that you are quite aware that 
certain property and several farms really belong to other 
people; but that through the representations or the fear of 
someone or other you are afraid to restore them. If you were 
really a Christian, you would fear God's judgments rather than 
man's tattle. Now mind what I say, for I am always telling you 
about this. . . . Further, you have sent me a wretched hack, and 
five good donkeys. The hack I cannot ride, he is such a brute ; 
and the animals that are good I cannot mount, because they 
are donkeys." 

Gregory's enemies, after his death, murmured against him 
as " a spendthrift and squanderer of the manifold treasures of 
the patriarchate/' because he had refused to tax the peasant 
with the same cruel rigour that his predecessors had thought- 
lessly used, and because he distributed lavishly among the poor 
the wealth which their own toil had produced. They even went 
so far as to burn his books, until they were stopped by the 
courageous entreaties of Peter the Deacon, who convinced 
them of their folly by asserting that he had seen the Holy 
Spirit in the shape of a dove resting on Gregory's head as he 
wrote. 

The last three years of Gregory's life (601-4) were spent in 
considerable physical suffering, and yet he was as active as ever 
in political life, and as tenderly considerate to his friends. To 
one old friend, also approaching the evening of life, Marinianus, 
bishop of Ravenna, he writes an urgent entreaty to take care of 
himself, and, if possible, to come and stay with him, that he 
might have him in his care. Marinianus and Gregory had 
been fellow- monks at St. Andrew's, but, on Gregory's promotion, 
they had quarrelled over a question of ceremonial, only to come 
together again in old age. " You ought to come to me before the 
summer season that I may personally, as far as I can, provide 



48 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY. 

for your sickness ; since the physicians say that the summer- 
time is peculiarly unfavourable to your complaint. ... I too, 
who see myself to be near death, if it shall please God to call 
me before you, would wish to pass away in your hands. . . . 
Further, I neither exhort nor admonish you, but I strictly order 
you not to presume to fast, since the physicians say that abstin- 
ence is very bad for your complaint." 

From such letters as this, the extraordinary lovableness of 
Gregory's character invariably stands out. In his famous 
"Liber Pastoralis Curse," which was cherished by the Church 
throughout Europe, and translated 200 years later by our 
English Alfred, Gregory gives us his own ideal in the portrait of 
the faithful priest, who is both "justly compassionate and 
affectionately severe ". Personal humility is to be the key-note 
of his life, and strong human sympathy the token of his calling. 
In spite of his own protest — " I direct others to the shore of 
perfection, while I am myself still tossed among the waves of 
faults " — we cannot but feel that the life of Gregory identifies 
itself very closely with that of the ideal shepherd of his Treatise. 

His own personal religion was primitive and credulous, and 
he loved to give it expression in splendour and rich symbolism. 
He has been called the "Master of the Ceremonies" of the 
Catholic Church, and it is to him that it owes much of the 
dignified and elaborate ritual which expresses so adequately the 
magnificence of the Catholic idea. The severe grandeur of the 
Gregorian chant was first taught by Gregory to the choristers of 
St. Peter's, and in his organisation of the Septiform Litany 
originated the rich pageantry of the ecclesiastical processions 
which illuminate the darkest pictures of the Middle Ages with 
the splendour of Christian joy. 

Gregory loved richness and colour for its own sake, whether 
in the wings of an angel or the glow of a procession, with the 
true Italian delight in brilliance and warmth. In his book of 
" Dialogues," written for the edification of the Lombard Court, 
he accumulated an amazing collection of legends of a more or 
less miraculous nature, some of which are full of imaginative 
beauty, and others of the simplicity of truth, while many are 
almost grotesque in their far-fetched absurdity. But there is 
little justice or insight in the criticism which sees in Gregory's 
" superstition " a moral defect ; in him the poet and the mystic 
were inextricably interwoven, and there is, after all, no very 
sharp dividing line between the man who sees miracles in every- 
day life and the man who sees in everyday life a miracle. 



PART II 
THE DARK AGES 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BREACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 

Part I. — The Opening of the Breach, a.d. 604-701 

THE achievement of Gregory the Great was not of such a 
character as to obtain instant recognition. It is not in 
the time of its young ambition and untested strength 
that a great institution is apt to pay its debts, and it needed 
more than a century of strife and a series of political crises to 
prove the stability of the foundation of papal power before the 
gratitude due to the greatest of its founders was recognised. In 
the great struggle of the next two centuries, when East and 
West stood face to face, and the Popes fought their way to the 
unique position which they hold in history, the militant bishops 
had cause enough to praise the memory of him who had paved 
the way to victory by establishing the Papacy as a moral and 
political power throughout Europe. 

Very little is known of Gregory's immediate successors, and 
there is no sign at first of the gathering storm-clouds. The 
East was absorbed in its Persian wars, and Phocas spent all the 
energy of which he was capable in thwarting conspiracies against 
his life and devising ingenious methods of punishment for the 
opponents of his tyranny. Such relations with Byzantium as 
come to light in the obscurity of the papal annals are of a 
friendly nature. Boniface III. in his single year of office 
obtained recognition from the Emperor of the title of Apostolic 
Head of Christendom, and Boniface IV. received a more sub- 
stantial earnest of imperial goodwill in the gift of the Pantheon. 
In the dedication of the shrine of Cybele and all the gods to St. 
Mary and all the Saints is symbolised both the antagonism and 
the continuity of Rome's two histories. Boniface and his clergy 
might sprinkle the walls of the pagan Church with holy water, 
and their Gloria in Excelsis cleave the sky through the opening 
in the vaulted roof, but the deposed deities still lingered on in 
the minds of the Christian worshippers as demons and evil 
spirits, and the Queen of Heaven inherited no small part of 
her honour from the tradition of Athene. Even so did the 

61 



52 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

imperial past, more powerful now than in the days when the 
old empire was dying, survive in the idea of spiritual dominion, 
and take new form ere long at the coronation of the first medi- 
aeval emperor. 

Tranquillity outlasted the reigns of Deusdedit (615-618) and 
Honorius I. (625-638), though signs were not wanting of the 
discord to come. The overthrow of Phocas by the more worthy 
usurper Heraclius was the signal for the first of a long series of 
risings in Kavenna against the Byzantine government, which 
could no longer keep effective control over the exarchate. But 
Deusdedit held aloof, and it is significant that in this early 
phase of the struggle there is no trace of any preconcerted 
attempt at independence on the part of the popes. Honorius 
I., the ablest of Gregory's immediate successors, occupied him- 
self in maintaining the Lombard peace and adorning the city 
with a new basilica, without a thought of political strife. His 
successors condemned him for his diplomatic lenity towards 
the Monothelite heresy, which had found favour at the Imperial 
Court. Monoth elitism was an offshoot of the Monophysite struggle 
which had raged in earlier generations. Heraclius saw in the" 
doctrine, which taught that in Christ there existed not one 
nature but one will, a convenient compromise between the con- 
flicting schools of thought, whose contentions had for so long 
distracted the empire. In 638 he issued his Ecthesis, a mani- 
fseto in favour of Monothelitism, and sent it to Rome for the 
Bishop's acceptance. Pope Severinus refused to comply, and in 
consequence had to see the troops of the exarch sack the papal 
treasury after besieging the Lateran for three days to shake his 
obstinacy. His successor, Theodore (642-649), although himself a 
Greek, was even more violently opposed to the Ecthesis, which 
he regarded as a dishonest quibble on a vital dilemma. He 
avoided direct hostilities, and stood aloof from the rebellion of 
Maurice the Chartular, who had raised all the i classes of Rome 
in political rebellion against the Emperor. The Pope preferred 
to confine the contest to the doctrinal sphere, — if indeed other 
motives for revolt appealed to him at all, which is very doubt- 
ful. He therefore confined himself to the patronage of the dis- 
reputable ex-patriarch Pyrrhus, who was expelled from his 
patriarchate for supposed connivance in the murder of the son 
of Heraclius. Being supplanted in his patriarchate by another 
Monothelite, Pyrrhus found it convenient to abjure the heresy 
at the feet of the Pope, until the death of his supplanter and the 
accession of a tolerant emperor made it expedient to apostatize 
once more. Theodore's terrible anathema, signed with the 



THE BREACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 53 

blood of Christ, followed the renegade to the Imperial Court, 
where Constans II. was on the point of issuing his Type, or edict 
of pacification, forbidding all further dispute on the subject of 
the One Nature and the One Will. 

The storm aroused by the Ecthesis was as nothing compared 
with that evoked by the Type. The heroic Pope Martin, con- 
vinced in his own cause and its consummate importance, sum- 
moned a Council of fifteen Bishops to condemn the offensive 
document, in defiance of the presence of the exarch, with 
imperial troops at his back, and Emperor's mandate to support 
him in enforcing his will. But the soldiery was by now national 
and Roman, and the exarch, baffled in his first attempt to 
coerce the Pope, retired to Naples, where, according to papal 
historians, he repented and died. Another exarch was sent in 
653 with more rigorous authority and a larger imperial con- 
tingent. Martin feigned illness and at first refused to see the 
exarch. But on the next day, the exarch forced an entry to 
the Lateran, and read an imperial decree of deposition against 
Martin as he lay on his couch before the High Altar. In vain 
the Pope retaliated with anathema, in vain his clergy rallied 
round to defend him from the armed force of the exarch. The 
soldiers struck the lights off the Altar, and in the confusion 
which followed, carried the Pope away to the Palace of the 
Caesars, whence he was conveyed by sea to Constantinople. 
His subsequent treatment at the hands of the Emperor falls 
little short of martyrdom. Submitted to an ill-treatment which 
evoked the pity of his enemies, he was tried on a series of 
manufactured charges, and finally condemned to banishment in 
the Chersonese. With his clothes in rags and a chain attached 
to his neck, he set out for his place of exile, where he died two 
years afterwards, deserted by his friends to whom he makes 
piteous appeals for alms, complaining that " they have forgotten 
my miseries, and do not care to know whether I am alive or 
dead : '. 

A still deeper humiliation was in store, before the Papacy 
was to emerge from its subjection. In 662, the restless Emperor 
Constans II. set out on a visit to Italy, with a view to effecting 
the belated recovery of his dominions in South Italy, and the 
subjugation of the Pope Vitalian. Chased by the ghost of his 
murdered brother, the hapless Emperor advanced to Benevento, 
where he was defeated by the Lombard princeling Romuald. 
On the sixth milestone along the Appian way, with every outward 
sign of deferential cordiality, the Pope received the Imperial 
wanderer, who came as a guest to his own city. Stranger and 



54 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

brief sojourner as he was, he lost no time in making good his 
possession. Abject humiliation was exacted from the Pope, and 
the cost of entertaining the Emperor and his luxurious Byzantine 
suite was defrayed by the Papal Treasury. The city, too, paid its 
tribute in the surrender of its bronze statues and the spoliation 
of the tiles of gilt bronze which adorned the roof of the Pantheon. 
These and other treasures were carried away by Constans, when 
at last he relieved Rome of his presence to visit Naples and 
Sicily. At Syracuse, four years later, he met a coward's death at 
the hand of a slave, leaving the spoils of Rome to fall into the 
hands of the Saracen conquerors of the island. 

The visit of Constans II. is the darkest moment for the 
Papacy in the long period of struggle with the East. From the 
moment of his departure the clouds begin to lift. 

In the time of Pope Donus (676-678) the new Emperor Con- 
stantino Pogonatus declared himself in favour of the Papacy. 
His predecessor had encouraged the Archbishop of Ravenna to 
throw off the supremacy of the Roman Bishop, and granted to 
the Exarchate complete immunity from papal control. The new 
Emperor cancelled these privileges and insisted on the con- 
secration of the existing Archbishop by Pope Agathon (678-682). 
Thus the supremacy of the Pope in the West was acknowledged 
and enforced by the Emperor himself. In 680 the Papacy gained 
a still more important victory at Constantinople itself, by the 
final overthrow of Monothelitism at the sixth (Ecumenical 
Council. Three bishops and three legates represented the 
Bishop of Rome, and it is a sign of the times that Agathon 
apologises for his representatives' lack of culture, on the plea 
that they had been forced to earn their living by manual 
labour, owing to the poverty of Italy. 

The friendship between the Emperor and the Pope was how- 
ever fictitious, and the pontificate of Sergius (687-701) brought 
to light the truth of which the whole of mediaeval history is an 
illustration — that the existence of two such principles as those 
which the Empire and the Papacy represent is inconsistent on 
any other basis than that of a normal antagonism. The trouble 
arose on the refusal of Sergius to ratify a canon of discipline 
passed by the Trullan Synod at Constantinople. The Emperor 
tried to reinact the tragedy of Pope Martin : he summoned the 
Pope to Constantinople, and sent his envoy to fetch him. But 
he miscalculated the effects which the earlier humiliation of the 
Popes had produced. Not only Rome, but the whole of imperial 
Italy stood by the Pope. The armies of Ravenna and Pentapolis 
followed the envoy to Rome, where he found himself in the 



THE BEEACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 55 

ignominious plight of a fugitive at the mercy of Sergius. He 
was obliged to hide in the Lateran while the Pope quelled the 
tumult which his coming had caused, and finally he took refuge 
in flight, amid the jeers of the derisive Romans. 

Thus in the victory of Sergius the wrongs of Martin were 
avenged, just as in subsequent generations the drama of Canossa 
was expatiated at Anagni. Already it was evident that tem- 
poral and spiritual overlordship could not coexist as separate and 
equal prerogatives held by distinct individuals. A weak Pope 
would always have to submit to a strong Emperor, as Martin and 
Vitalian had submitted to the tyrant Constans; on the other 
hand, bishops would not be wanting of the ability and energy of 
Sergius, powerful enough to assert the supremacy of their spiritual 
prerogative. 

Temporal and spiritual power might exist side by side in the 
same universe : sun and moon — to use the canonists' metaphor 
— might shine together in the same heaven. But the one must 
outshine the other ; the sun prevails, and we call it day ; or the 
moon shines out before the retreating sun, forming the night. 

If this had been realised while the opposition to papal supre- 
macy came from the worn-out eastern empire, before the birth of 
the vigorous Germanic institution, the history of the Papacy would 
have been much less interesting, free from much that is sordid, 
and bereft of its largest opportunities. 



Part II. — The Widening of the Gulf, a.d. 704-741 

The story of the seventh century would be incomplete with- 
out a reference to the custom of pilgrimage, which grew up at 
this time. 

The profound reverence of royal converts, such as Cadwalla 
of Mercia, when he came to receive baptism at the hands of 
Sergius in 689, must have made a striking impression on the 
Romans, distracted as they were between their quarrels with 
Byzantium and their perpetual dread of the Lombards. Their 
city, which the ravages of plague and famine had reduced to a 
conglomeration of poverty-stricken hamlets scattered amongst 
ghost-haunted ruins, was still the desire of nations. Travellers 
came and went, falling on their knees as they approached her 
gates, and leaving their gifts at her shrines ere they went their 
way, to tell of her beauty and spread abroad the wonder of her 
fame. Others, more deeply stirred by the spell of that super- 
natural charm which every generation has confessed, entered the 



56 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

city never to return. Thus did Coenrad of Mercia and Offa of 
Essex, who, twenty years later than the baptism of Cadwalla, 
forsook their own people and their royal estate, to tread as monks 
the holy ground of the eternal city. 

Meanwhile Popes John VI. (701-705) and John VII. (705-707) 
maintained the passive resistance which had become the tradi- 
tional papal policy towards Byzantium. They negotiated inde- 
pendently with the Lombards, and refused to ratify, while they 
avoided condemning, the Trullan canon. Pope Constantine (708- 
715), the " last of the subject Popes," adopted a more reactionary 
attitude. He visited Constantinople, and kept on excellent terms 
with the Emperor at the expense of the papal principle. But his 
attitude was by now in no way representative of popular feeling 
and the Byzantine yoke was never more resented than at the 
moment of the papal alliance. A punitive expedition against 
Ravenna in 709 increased the anti-imperial hostility, and on the 
overthrow of Justinian II. by Philippicus Bardanes led to a more 
serious revolt both in Komagna and in Rome. All that was now 
needed to complete the work of the seventh century was some 
great unifying principle of opposition — a casus belli which should 
draw together the various units of disaffection — the clergy, with 
their wounded orthodoxy, the nobility, insulted by the vaunted 
luxury of the Byzantine courtiers, the ill-paid army and the dis- 
affected populace — under the leadership of a national pope. The 
opportunity came at last in the great iconoclastic struggle, in 
which the accumulated grievances of the four centuries since the 
foundation of Constantinople found vent. 

In 715, Gregory II. was raised to the Pontificate — a Roman 
in whom was combined the evangelising zeal of his forerunner 
and namesake, and the ambition of Leo without the greater 
Gregory's spiritual insight, or the sagacity of the first Great 
Pope. Resolute in defence, and courageous in attack, he was, 
however, a worthy antagonist of Leo, the Isaurian, the ablest 
and least criminal of Byzantine usurpers. For ten years there 
was peace, while Leo consolidated his empire, and Gregory, with 
difficulty, staved off a Lombard attack, and rebuilt the Roman 
walls as a precaution. But in 726, the Emperor, unable to 
resist the fascination of religious controversy, startled Christen- 
dom by his first edict against the worship of images. It is not 
improbable that Leo was actuated throughout the controversy 
by a disinterested desire to purify the Christian religion. Super- 
stition had, no doubt, thrown a veil over the mind of the Church 
in East and West alike, and obscured its clarity of vision. Mo- 
hammedan insurgents derided their opponents with having ex- 



THE BEEACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 57 

changed one form of Pantheism for another — the worship of 
the heavens for the idolatory of the saints ; and when we are 
confronted in the records with the countless pictures of Christ 
" not made with hands," and innumerable statues of the Virgin 
endowed with inconceivable virtues of healing and forgiveness, 
there seems only too much truth in the charge. It is not for 
his aims but for his methods that Leo must be condemned, 
and the failure of his efforts was due to the process by which 
he sought to carry them out. Iconoclasm has been aptly de- 
scribed as " a premature rationalism, enforced upon an unreason- 
ing age — an attempt to spiritualise by law and edict a 
generation which had been unspiritualised by centuries of 
materialistic devotion " (Milman). 

The first edict was followed by an earthquake in the iEgean, 
which the outraged devotees interpreted as Divine vengeance on 
the Emperor's sacrilege. Leo, however, not above superstitious 
qualms, saw in it a rebuke for his own half-measures, and 
promptly issued a second edict, ordering the destruction of the 
images, which the former decree had proved powerless to rob of 
their veneration. The effect was an instantaneous and open 
rebellion. An officer executing the destruction of a popular 
Crucifix with unnecessary outrage, was beaten to death by the 
women o f Constantinople. An armed force charged the resisting 
mob in the streets of new Rome, while rebellion reigned in the 
islands and on the coast of the iEgean. 

In the West, meanwhile, all semblance of loyalty was thrown 
to the winds : the Pope hurled defiance, and Rome threatened 
to elect a new Emperor of the West. Naples assassinated its 
Duke, and Ravenna expelled its exarch. Only the Lombard 
king kept his head, and took advantage of the universal con- 
fusion to achieve the conquest of Ravenna — the long-deferred 
hope of Lombard aggression since the foundation of the kingdom. 

Gregory, in alarm, turned to Venice, with whose help Ravenna 
was re-taken, for of the two hostile forces which menaced him, 
that of the energetic Lombard king Liutprand was certainly 
the more dangerous. Indeed, between the forces of the icono- 
clasts, under the exarch Eutychius, and the importunate over- 
tures of Liutprand, the poor Pope was in a considerable dilemma, 
and it is hardly surprising that his remonstrances with the Em- 
peror should show more agitation than argument, and more com- 
mand of incriminating invective than of dignified self-restraint. 
11 These are coarse and rude arguments," he writes, with some 
truth, " suited to a coarse and rude mind, such as yours, but 
they contain the truth." His letter is not a very favourable 



58 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

specimen of a papal document ; threats which he never meant 
to carry out alternate with abuses which are more bombastic 
than forcible, and his biblical analogies are apt to lose force 
from their inaccurate application. But it must be remembered 
that rumours of plots against his life rang in the Pope's ears as 
he wrote; the exarch's legions lay encamped before the walls 
of Rome, while in the distance Liutprand was drawing nearer, 
with all the Lombard forces at his back. It is true that the 
rest of Italy drew together in defence of the Pope; that the 
Romans had bound themselves by a solemn oath to live and die 
in saving him. But ultimately Gregory knew that no power 
could deliver him from the hand of one or other of his enemies, 
and of the two, Byzantium as the most distant was the least to 
be feared. Foreseeing his dilemma, he had followed up his 
first letter with another more conciliatory document which is 
notable as containing the first papal attempt to distinguish be- 
tween the two spheres of temporal and spiritual government — 
" the powers of the palace and of the Church " as he defines 
them. But the conception was too new to ruffle the serenity of 
the Emperor, who disposes of it with the simple assertion — " I 
am Emperor and I am priest ". 

Such was the situation in 729, and never was there a moment 
in papal history on which more vital issues depended. One 
last desperate appeal to Charles Martel, the hero of the Frank- 
ish nation, one final attempt to stir up rebellion in the Lom- 
bard dominions, and the Pope, inspired by the noblest examples 
of papal heroism, set out in the spirit of Leo for the Lombard 
camp. The invincible Liutprand sank on his knees before the 
defenceless Gregory, and suffered himself to be led to the tomb 
of St. Peter. Here, in lowliest self-abasement, he surrendered 
the ambitions which he had brought so near to realisation, and 
won in return for himself and the exarch the priestly pardon 
for which no price seemed too high to pay. 

Soon after the withdrawal of Liutprand, Gregory died, but 
not before he had proved his willingness to maintain the Imperial 
authority by the suppression of a popular rebellion against Leo 
in 730. 

By his energy and courage, Gregory II. had secured the first 
step in the direction of temporal independence : to his successor, 
Gregory III., it remained to follow in his steps. Obviously the 
first thing required of the new Pope was to define his attitude 
towards iconoclasm. Accordingly, he sent an embassy in 731, 
with a message to the Emperor couched in such uncompromising 
language that the presbyter who was charged with it lacked the 



THE BEEACH BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 59 

courage to deliver it. His next step was to summon a Council 
in Rome, which passed a decree of defiance ; but this document, 
like the earlier message, failed to reach the Imperial Court, 
owing to the arrest and imprisonment of the bearer in Sicily. 
The Emperor refused to receive communications of which the 
gist was too well known to him, but he must have heard with 
concern of the influx of new images, splendidly mounted on 
marble and silver pillars, which Gregory had ordered for the 
adornment of St. Peter's. Then followed a war of reprisals. 
The Emperor sent a fleet to Italy with a view to reclaiming his 
own, but it foundered off the coast of Calabria. To indemnify 
himself he seized Church possessions in Sicily and Calabria, thus 
confiscating property which brought the Pope 35,000 gold pieces 
a year. The Pope in retaliation annexed Gallese in Tuscany " to 
the Holy Republic and the Roman Army," by a secret treaty with 
the Duke of Spoleto, who relied on the papal alliance as a means 
of throwing off his allegiance to his suzerain Liutprand. This, 
of course, provoked war with the Lombard king, who seized 
four cities of the Roman Duchy and prepared for further attack. 
Once more the Papacy was exposed to the perils of a three- 
cornered struggle, and once more the Pope turned his eyes to the 
well-tried valour of the Frankish nation, whence alone deliver- 
ance could come. Unfortunately for Gregory, an hereditary 
alliance already existed between the Lombard kingdom and the 
Frankish Mayors of the Palace, the de facto rulers of France, who 
by their energy and valour had already supplanted the old 
Merovingian dynasty in all but name. In vain Gregory 
besought Charles Martel in panic-stricken appeals " not to 
close his ears against his supplications, lest St. Peter close 
against him the gates of Heaven". In vain he appealed to the 
pride of the hero of Tours, quoting the Lombard taunt, "Let 
him come, this Charles, with his army of Franks ; let him, if he 
can, rescue you out of our hands ". Even the gift of the keys of 
St. Peter's tomb and the filings from the Apostle's chains failed 
to shake the friendship of the Frank for his old friend and ally. 
Charles deplored the situation, but his Frankish honour forbade 
him to alleviate it : death alone removed the tension which in 
741 held the Papacy in suspense. In the same year died three 
great men : first, Leo the Isaurian — the last Emperor who strove 
to make his power in Italy a reality ; then Charles Martel, who 
had stemmed the tide of Saracen conquest and delivered France 
from the infidel at Poictiers ; and lastly, Pope Gregory III., the 
founder of the Frankish alliance, which holds so momentous a 
place in papal history. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE APPEAL TO THE FRANKS, AND THE REVIVAL OP THE 
WESTERN EMPIRE, a.d. 741-800 

IT is to the credit of Pope Zacharius (742-752) that he took 
advantage of the changes which the year 741 had made in 
the protagonists of the European struggle to introduce a 
policy of peace. A treaty with Liutprand, followed up by two 
personal interviews, created a twenty years' truce between the 
Papacy and the Lombard kingdom. Awed by the presence of 
the Pope in his own capital, and moved by his eloquence, 
Liutprand gave way to the papal demands, which included 
nothing less than the restoration of all Liutprand's conquests 
from the Greek Emperor. Having thus undone in his last hour 
by a single generous impulse the work of a long and energetic 
career, the Lombard king, of whom none but his enemies the 
popes had ever spoken ill, ended his days in peace. 

The peace policy of Zacharius began with the Lombards, but 
spread ere long to Constantinople. The new Emperor Constantine 
Copronymous was a more tolerant iconoclast than his father, 
and his practical mind more quickly realised the necessary 
limitations of imperial intervention in Italian affairs. Since 
the Emperor could no longer hold his own against the Lombards, 
he was grateful for the titular authority which the papal policy 
had preserved for him, and not too anxious to prevent the 
Papacy from benefiting by the recovery of the imperial 
territories. All real advantage from the recovery of the 
Exarchate fell, of course, to the Pope, but in return for the 
restoration of imperial prestige thus acquired, the Emperor 
bestowed on Zacharius the cities of Norma and Nympha. 

The peace of Liutprand outlasted the reign of his pious 
successor Rachis, but when in 749 the Lombards wearied of 
their saintly ruler and encouraged him to retire to a monastery, 
choosing in his stead his warrior brother Astolf, the unnatural 
Lombard-papal alliance temporarily broke down. Zacharius was 
therefore glad of an opportunity, which occurred in 752, of 
renewing negotiations with the Franks. 

60 



THE APPEAL TO THE FEANKS 61 

Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, saw that the moment had 
come at last for which his dynasty had waited and towards 
which it had laboured for at least two generations. Anxious to 
salve his conscience for the perjury which he contemplated, 
Pepin sent an embassy to Zacharius to inquire of him " whether 
it was well to keep to kings who had no royal power". The Pope, 
who understood the message and knew what was expected of 
him, replied that " it was better that the man who had the real 
power should also have the title of king ". The verdict of 
Zacharius confirmed the overthrow of the " pageant of Mero- 
vingian sovereignty " which the anthropomorphic prejudices of 
the Franks, and the cautious diplomacy of the de facto rulers 
had preserved, long after all real power had passed from the 
dynasty. The brilliant career of Charles Martel had, however, 
overcome the obstacles which deterred his house from actual 
usurpation, and the papal sanction removed such lingering 
scruples as held Pepin back from completing the work of his 
dynasty. It was a decisive moment in papal history when the 
Popes thus began to arbitrate in national affairs. In the first 
bestowal of the Pope's blessing on an act of usurpation in 
answer to the usurper's appeal, the claim to give and withold 
all temporal authority is already foreshadowed. 

Meanwhile, Astolf had taken Ravenna and was already 
threatening Rome in defiance of Liutprand's treaty. At this 
crisis the good Pope Zacharius died, and was succeeded by the 
Roman Stephen II. (752-757), whose short and momentous 
pontificate sealed the Frankish alliance which holds so high an 
importance in papal history. Stephen did not at once despair 
of the peace-policy, and succeeded in arresting the Lombard 
march, and in renewing the twenty years' truce with Astolf. 
But both the Pope and the King realised on how slight a 
foundation it rested, and under the cover of amity, each 
jealously watched the movements of the other. In 753, Stephen 
left Rome with the avowed intention of visiting Astolf at his 
own court as his predecessor had done. But the visit to Pavia 
was merely a blind, or rather a stepping-stone to another 
destination, as Astolf realised when Stephen left him to take 
his way across the Alps. Early in the year 754, the Pope met 
the king of the Franks at Ponthion and as they proceeded on 
their way to Paris, King Pepin walking on foot beside the 
Pope's stirrup, the terms of the treaty of Kiersy were 
informally defined. Each had a boon to ask, and each a 
reward to offer — King Pepin, bearing himself in dutiful sub- 
mission, solicited the Apostolic benediction on himself and his 



62 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

children in their newly-acquired dignity : Pope Stephen, pros- 
trating himself before the King of the Franks, besought his 
help against the Lombards. At St. Denis, Stephen consecrated 
Pepin and his sons legitimate rulers of France, receiving in 
return the promise of Ravenna and the Pentapolis as. soon as 
Pepin should be able to wrest it from Astolf. Pepin solemnly 
undertook the burden of the Lombard war, in return for which 
Pope Stephen, "with the consent of the Roman people," conferred 
on him the title of Patricius. It was no mere titular dignity 
which the Pope thus bestowed on his protector, but an office 
which comprised certain specified duties and defined the 
relationship in which the holder stood towards the city. It is 
true that the relationship was vague and the responsibilities 
rather indefinite. But the Patriciate, since it had been conferred 
by custom on the exarch of Ravenna, had acquired a recognised 
official and legal significance, and it is in this sense — allied to 
the terms " Protector " and " Defensor " — that it was conferred 
on Pepin. The Popes were careful not to lay too much stress on 
this aspect of the title, and Pepin was cautious in his use of it. 
But the Patriciate was the stepping-stone to higher things : 
Pepin did well to be cautious, for his non-interference in the 
internal policy of the Papacy was the surest means of hastening 
on the climax towards which events were already trending. 

Astolf, the Lombard, had meanwhile tried in vain to prevent 
the Franco-papal alliance, sending the royal monk Carloman to 
intervene. But nothing could daunt the untried religious 
enthusiasm of Pepin, who swept down across the Alps and 
defeated the Lombards at Susa. Besieged by the Franks in 
his capital at Pavia, Astolf promised to surrender the papal 
lands, and Pepin, in his first Deed of Gift, made them over to 
the Pope, who veiled his acceptance behind the vague term 
" Respublica ". The precedent thus established was quickly 
followed up. Hardly had Pepin's forces retired behind the 
Alps, when Astolf advanced on Rome, calling scornfully on the 
Romans to " Let the Franks come and deliver you out of our 
hands". The taunt was forwarded to the quarter where it 
would be most telling, in a letter from S. Peter to the king of 
the Franks, bidding him on pain of eternal punishment to come 
and deliver the Apostolic See in its dire need. Another invasion 
was the result, and another Frankish donation, which was 
followed by the death of the Lombard king — " the tyrant and 
associate of the devil," wrote the Pope, " is pierced by the sword 
of God and flung down into the Gulf of Hell ". In other words, 
Astolf the Warrior had met his end in a hunting accident, and 



THE APPEAL TO THE FBANKS 63 

Desiderius reigned in his stead. Already, in the blasphemous 
abusiveness of the Pope, and in the clamour of faction fight 
which surrounded his death-bed, the consequences of the 
institution of temporal power are traceable, and the Papacy- 
might almost be said to have changed its character during the 
three years which intervened between the Treaty of Kiersy and 
the death of Pope Stephen II. 

The election of the new Pope was the victory of the progres- 
sive party, who relied on the Franks, over the reactionary faction 
who turned their eyes to the Emperor as the more natural 
protector of Rome. Paul I. (757-767) was the brother of his 
predecessor, and his superior in diplomacy and in the arts of 
temporal government. He was more amiable and easy-going 
than Stephen, and his dealings with men are marked by less 
bluster and more common-sense. In the face of possible hostility 
from Byzantium, Paul dared not provoke a quarrel with the 
Lombard king, whose side his predecessor had taken against his 
monastic rival Rachis. The Pope had, therefore, to fall back on 
diplomacy of a rather doubtful honesty. He invited Desiderius 
to Rome for the purpose of negotiating a renewal of the truce. 
It was agreed that Desiderius should restore the four cities 
which he had siezed in revenge for papal assistance given to the 
rebel duke of Spoleto. In return the Pope undertook to obtain 
from King Pepin the surrender of the Lombard hostages detained 
at the Frankish Court. The Lombard ambassador went rejoic- 
ing on his way to Paris, bearing the Pope's open letter to the 
Frankish king, little suspecting that it would be forestalled by 
another document explaining that Paul had acted under com- 
pulsion, and entreating Pepin to refuse the Lombard request. 
Thus the Lombard peace was preserved by papal artifice, and 
the precedent was established by which the spiritual prerogative 
was called upon to justify political subterfuge. 

But the first protest against the temporal sovereignty of the 
Popes was purely political in character, the first of a long series 
of revolutionary outbursts which dogged the Papacy throughout 
the Middle Ages and beyond. The Roman nobility of the eighth 
century, the forerunners of the Colonna and Orsini of a later 
age, watched with jealous anxiety the accumulation of papal 
territory and by taking up the cry of municipal privilege pre- 
pared themselves for resistance. The gradual extension of the 
Patrimony, supplemented by the donations of the King of the 
Franks, brought the Papacy into direct competition with neigh- 
bouring landowners, and as a natural consequence weakened 
the bond of spiritual allegiance. In 767, while Paul I. lay dying 



64 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

in the Lateran palace, Toto of Naples, a Tuscan landowner, came 
to Rome and, with the help of armed followers, forced the Romans 
to accept his brother Constantine as Pope. No one was less 
fitted than this weak young man to act the part of anti-pope, 
but his brother compelled him to accept the perilous dignity, 
causing him to be ordained in all the necessary degrees of Holy 
Orders successively, while he himself discharged the safer and 
more remunerative functions of the power behind the throne. 
The rebellion of Toto failed, like almost all the oligarchical 
movements of history, from the twofold cause of jealousy among 
the units composing the ruling faction, and the instability of 
their supporters among the lower orders. The great ecclesiastical 
officials, headed by Christophorus, the Primicerius, and Sergius, 
his son, availed themselves of a sudden impulse of reaction to 
effect with the help of the Lombards the overthrow of Con- 
stantine. The unfortunate usurper was dragged through the 
city, mutilated and condemned by a Lateran synod, which in 
consideration of his personal unimportance suffered him to end 
his days in inglorious obscurity. 

Apart from the importance which attaches to the brief career 
of Constantine as a comment on the early effects of temporal 
power, this incident is interesting as revealing the growth during 
this period of the power of the great officials. The Lateran 
Court had inherited the heterogeneous character of the Imperial 
palace, as the fountain of all government. The seven Judices 
de Clero, of whom the Primicerios was the foremost, were the 
heads of the various departments. Though only in minor orders, 
by reason of their secular duties, they ranked next to the Pope 
himself, over the heads of the Cardinals and Bishops. In 
ecclesiastical processions they led the Pope by the hand, sup- 
porting him on the right and on the left as his immediate 
dependents. Each of the Judices had a staff of notaries under 
him, which formed the executive body. Only next in importance 
were the secular officers of the household, the Vestarius, the 
Cubicularius, and the Major Domo, who combined their personal 
offices with wide judicial and administrative powers. This 
elaboration of the machinery of papal government, belonging 
as it does to the first period of temporal power, suggests a com- 
parison with the rise of territorialism, as it is to be found in the 
early beginnings of feudal monarchy. What had puzzled Tacitus 
in his observation of the German tribes — the dignity attached to 
personal service — was fast becoming true of the Romans them- 
selves. The offices of personal attendance on the Pope were 
sought by Roman nobles with the same avidity as the great 



THE APPEAL TO THE FEANKS 65 

palace offices were sought by the Franks. The comparison must 
not, however, be pressed too far. The palace organisation of the 
Papacy was predominantly an inheritance from the imperial 
past, borrowed in part from the traditions which clung to the 
city, and in part directly copied from Byzantium. 

The overthrow of Constantine was effected by a combination 
of the great officials and the Lombards, but no sooner was it 
accomplished than the allies drew apart. The Lombard candi- 
date for the papal succession was defeated by Stephen III., the 
nominee of Christophorus. Stephen was the one man who had 
remained loyal to Paul I. on his lonely death-bed, hut unhappily 
this act of fidelity does not seem to be characteristic of him as 
Pope. His first object was to effect the downfall of those who 
had raised him up by conspiring with his former opponent, 
King Desiderius. He treacherously delivered Christophorus 
and Sergius over to the Lombards, after suborning their sup- 
porters among the lower classes by pleading his own defence- 
lessness against the vengeance of Desiderius. 

In France, meanwhile, King Pepin had been succeeded by 
the mutually hostile brothers Carloman and Charles. Urged 
on by the Pope, Queen Bertha had managed to reconcile her 
two sons, and in 770 set out on a journey to Rome. But her 
visit was a disappointment to Stephen, who had hoped to renew, 
through her mediation, the long-standing Franco-papal alliance. 
To the Pope's consternation, rumours reached him, and were too 
quickly confirmed, of a double marriage treaty between the 
Frankish brothers and the daughters of Desiderius. Stephen's 
dissuasion omitted no argument, moral or political, which the 
situation might suggest. He praised the beauty of the Frankish 
women to the disparagement of the Lombard race ; he reminded 
the princes of the fable which lay on the Lombards the respon- 
sibility for the introduction of leprosy into Italy ; lastly, he 
abjured them, upon pain of anathema, to remain faithful to their 
wives of their own nation. But Charles, even in the earliest 
stage of his career, recognised no obstacles, and deafened him- 
self to papal rebuke. He married the Lombard Desiderata, and 
poured robust scorn on his more tractable brother. Stephen's 
panic was however unnecessary, for the Franco-Lombard alliance 
barely survived its fulfilment. By a characteristic stroke of 
apparent caprice, which probably veiled a well-considered 
political move, Charles in 771 repudiated Desiderata and re- 
vived the papal alliance. Secure in the renewal of the 
Frankish alliance, Pope Stephen died, and was succeeded in 772 
by Hadrian I. The contrast between the new Pope and his 
5 



66 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

predecessor was complete. The cunning and unscrupulous 
Sicilian, who broke faith with his friends as freely as he nattered 
his enemies, was succeeded by a high-minded Roman of noble birth 
and distinguished bearing. Himself in sympathy with the great 
official class, one of Hadrian's first acts was to recall the party 
of Christophorus, thereby pledging himself to hostility with the 
Lombard, which the renewal of the Frankish alliance had already 
prepared. Associated with the recall of the officials was the fall 
of their inveterate enemy Afiarta, the paid assassin, who acted 
as Lombard agent at Pavia and at Rome. Hadrian pressed for 
the fulfilment of the original Lombard treaty, less with the 
thought of settlement than of bringing things to an issue. 
Charles meanwhile had embarked on hostilities with King Desi- 
derius on his own account by seizing the territories of his 
nephews on the death of his brother Carloman. Carloman's 
widow appealed against Charles to the Lombard Court, and 
Desiderius eagerly embraced her cause with the hope of stirring 
up civil war amongst the Franks, and so keeping Charles out of 
Italy. In 774 Desiderius took the offensive by seizing four papal 
cities, and entered Etruria on his way to Rome. Twenty monks 
threw themselves at his feet in vain, and a deputation of priests 
made fruitless intercession on behalf of the Apostolic city. 
Desiderius was no second Liutprand, to turn back within sight 
of his goal, and Hadrian fitly judged that the moment had come 
to put the loyalty of the Frankish hero to the test. The con- 
tinual, and sometimes groundless, complaints of Paul and 
Stephen III., as well as the plausible representations of Desi- 
derius, had cooled the first ardour of the Patricians, and Charles 
met the first appeal of Hadrian with non-committal courtesy. 
Desiderius protested that he came to Rome as a pilgrim, desir- 
ing nothing but an interview with the Pope. Hadrian, with 
some reason, suspected the pilgrim who came in the guise of 
an invader, and closed his gates against the wolf in sheep's 
clothing. Charles, however, continued to suspect the shepherd 
who had given so many false alarms. Two preliminary embas- 
sies failed to achieve a settlement before Charles set out in 
person across the Mont Cenis. The Lombard resistance was no 
more effective now than in the time of Pepin. After laying siege 
to Pavia, where Desiderius himself had withdrawn, Charles 
pressed on to Verona and overthrew the Lombard heir-apparent, 
who held the town in defence of the exiled family of Carloman. 
Prince Adelchis fled to Byzantine protection, while the family 
of Carloman, together with their champion, the Frankish rebel 
Autchar, threw themselves on the mercy of the conqueror. Leav- 



THE APPEAL TO THE FEANKS 67 

ing his army encamped before Pavia, Charles set out for Rome, 
the first of the series of visits which led to the climax of the 
year 800. In its political aspect, the visit of Charles to Hadrian 
merely ratified and confirmed what had taken place between 
Pepin and Stephen in 754. The treaty of Kiersy was produced 
by the Pope, and duly accepted by the Frankish king. The 
days of the Lombard kingdom were numbered, and Charles had 
effected the purpose for which the Patriciate had been bestowed 
on his father. The enemies of St. Peter had been overthrown 
by his self-chosen protector ; it remained for St. Peter's repre- 
sentative to secure the spoils of victory. Whatever mental 
reservations Charles may have made in his acceptance of the 
treaty of Kier6y, he displayed no reluctance to promise that the 
Church alone should be the gainer by his Italian conquests. 
Now, as in 754, the Exarchate with the whole of the Pentapolis 
was promised to the Pope, as soon as the work of conquest should 
be completed. Charles's amenity to the papal demands is not 
really inconsistent with his own territorial ambition. His 
schemes of Frankish aggrandisement hardly included Italy at 
present in more than the vague sense which the term Patrician 
covered. Moreover, his Saxon and Frisian wars kept him fully 
occupied nearer home, and it served his ends better to erect 
a strong papal state, capable of maintaining its own against the 
Lombards, than to expend his own resources in an endeavour to 
establish a Frankish kingdom in Italy which in his absence he 
would be unable to control. The same considerations had 
moved his father Pepin to construct the original treaty, which 
had been signed in the name of his two sons as well as his own. 
But between the original drafting of the treaty of Kiersy and its 
ratification in 774, new weight had been thrown into the balance 
from the papal side by the daring invention of the Donation of 
Constantine. The exact date when the clerical lawyers first stated 
that Constantine had formally adopted Pope Silvester as heir to 
his temporal dominion is unknown, but ever since the emancipa- 
tion of the Papacy from the Byzantine yoke the need for legalis- 
ing the basis of papal autocracy must have arisen. To a later 
age, less ruled by legal formalism than the eighth century, the 
de facto sovereignty of the Pope might have justified its existence 
de jure. Besides, it devolved on the Pope to provide for the 
poor of Rome, and papal revenues were largely drawn from 
Imperial sources. But neither rationalistic nor humanitarian 
arguments satisfied the legal conscience of the eighth century, 
which demanded that all authority should be founded on legal 
right, and every right should have a warrant. It was in order 



68 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

to meet this deficiency, at the moment when it was likely to be 
felt, and to forestall inquiry which might prove inconvenient at 
so critical an epoch, that the clerical lawyers supplied the 
panacea of the Forged Donation. A certain amount can be said 
in justification of the invention, but it remains undoubtedly the 
most deplorable incident of early papal history. It supplied a 
fictionary basis to an institution worthy of a nobler foundation, 
and committed posterity to the alternative of adherence either 
to a fraudulent delusion or to a distorted view of history. 

Charles rode away from Rome in the Easter week of 774, and 
rejoined his army in the north. The downfall of Pavia was com- 
pleted. Desiderius and his wife were forced into monastic retire- 
ment, and the Lombard dukes did homage to Charles, who placed 
on his own head the iron crown of Alboin. Arichis, Duke of Bene- 
vento, alone held aloof in sullen loyalty to Adelchis, the son of 
Desiderius. No sooner had Charles withdrawn across the Alps than 
an epidemic of rebellion brought to light the consequences of the 
Lombard downfall. Ravenna, always chafing against " the yoke 
of Roman servitude," refused to submit to papal domination 
under the terms of the treaty of Kiersy. Spoleto, forgetful of past 
benefits, assumed independence and foreswore her former homage. 
Friuli prepared for revolt in the north, and Benevento in the 
south became the centre of intrigue for the Lombard pretender, 
and opened up negotiations with Byzantium. 

A punitive expedition into Friuli was all that it was possible 
for Charles to accomplish at the moment, but with characteristic 
good sense he brought diplomatic activity to bear on the real 
centre of disaffection in overtures to the Empress Irene. For 
Charles still kept up the fiction of Imperial vassalage, and to 
ward off a direct collision between the Franks and the Empire 
was as yet the main anchor of his Italian policy. A marriage 
was accordingly proposed, but never carried into effect, between 
Charles's daughter and the young Emperor Constantine VI. 

These same negotiations led to Charles's third expedition to 
Italy in 780-781, when another interview with the Pope took 
place, less favourable to tbe Holy See than that of seven years 
before. Charles insisted upon the coronation of his son Pepin as 
King of Italy, and thus, to the Pope's distress, established a per- 
manent dynastic interest in Italy. 

Meanwhile peace with the East was by no means easy to 
maintain. The fiction of Imperial vassalage was strained to its 
uttermost to cover Charles's conquests and donations, and the 
exiled pretender Adelchis grew daily in the favour of the Byzan- 
tine Court. Arichis, of Benevento, was in open intrigue with 



THE APPEAL TO THE EEANKS 69 

Adelchis, whose claims were the pretext of an offensive Lombard 
league. An important new donation gave the nominal posses- 
sion of Roman Tuscany to Hadrian, but there were obstacles in 
the way of actual seizure. Arichis succumbed to Charles's 
demands, only to break faith with him as soon as he had 
withdrawn. He pledged himself to the support of the Eastern 
Empire, and only his death in 787 freed Charles from the 
imminence of war. To fill his place Charles sent his son Grim- 
oald, who had lived as a hostage at the Frankish court, and 
returned to his own people pledged to a philo-Frankish policy. 

In 795, Pope Hadrian died, and Charles, on receiving the news 
of his death, wept as for a brother. The two men had been united 
in the closest bond of political interest and mutual dependence 
for more than twenty years, and Charles knew well how uncertain 
and how momentous was the immediate future. The long reign of 
Hadrian had not been entirely spent in political aggrandisement, 
although he extended the papal boundary to the limit which it 
preserved throughout the Middle Ages and, roughly speaking, 
maintained until 1870. Material prosperity had gone hand in 
hand with political expansion, and Hadrian was at least as active 
in the one as in the other direction. He restored the walls and 
the dams of the Tiber, and he renewed the Trajan aqueducts 
which carried water to Rome from the Sabatine country. Above 
all, he was interested in the colonisation of the Campagna. He 
extended the system of forming Domus Culture, or small agri- 
cultural settlements, which his forerunner Zacharias had insti- 
tuted. The revenues which these colonies produced were devoted 
entirely to poor relief, and a hundred poor people were fed daily at 
the Vatican on the proceeds. Meanwhile, the first age of temporal 
power was also a period of artistic activity ; workers in mosaic 
and in tapestry were busy decorating St. Peter's. But artistic 
activity was accompanied by intellectual apathy. In the dearth 
of literary enterprise, such names as that of Adalberga, the 
cultured wife of Arichis the rebel, or the still greater historian, 
Paulus Diaconus, stand out in remarkable isolation in Italy, as 
compared with the new kingdoms of the West. 

Hadrian was succeeded by Leo III. (796-816), who immedi- 
ately sent a complimentary embassy to Charles, informing him 
of his election and delivering into his hands the banner of Rome 
and the keys of the Apostle's grave. The new reign soon showed 
signs that it was to be a troubled one. The power of the 
clerical aristocracy had grown since the days of Toto of Nepi, 
and under Hadrian it had developed into nepotism. Hadrian's 
nephews now began to conspire against Leo, whom they regarded 



70 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

as an upstart, and Paschalis, the Primicerius, headed a revolt. 
On the 25th of April, 799, the Pope set out from S. Laurence, in 
Lucina, accompanied by an ecclesiastical procession chanting 
the greater Litany. On the way the Pope was attacked by 
Paschalis and Campulus, both nephews of Pope Hadrian, with 
an armed force at their backs. With outrageous barbarism they 
tried to mutilate him, and failing, left him a prisoner in the 
monastery of S. Erasmus. Hence, through the loyalty of his 
adherents and the hastiness of his foes, he managed to escape to 
St. Peter's. The Frankish envoy and Winichis, Duke of Spoleto, 
helped him to flee to his natural protector, Charles. Charles 
was in Saxony, engaged in an important campaign, and the 
coming of the Pope at this particular juncture was disconcerting. 
However, he met him at Paderborn, listened to his grievances, 
and sent him back to Rome with two envoys, who were 
instructed to take initial proceedings against the rebel officials. 
Moreover, he promised to follow them to Rome in person in time 
for the Christmas festival. With the fulfilment of this promise 
is connected the great central event in mediseval history. 
Charles came to Rome in 800 little more than a barbarian 
conqueror, whose sword had freed Italy from the Lombards, and 
whose piety had enriched the papal dominions : he left it a few 
days later " Charles Augustus, great and pacific Emperor of the 
Romans, crowned by God ". No other single act in the history of 
modern Europe can be compared in importance with the simple 
ceremony in St. Peter's, when the Pope placed on the head of the 
kneeling king the crown of the Western Empire. Fraught with 
consequences for good and for evil in the future which flowed 
from it, and instant with problems of a theoretical and practical 
nature which the whole of mediaeval history is an attempt to 
solve, the coronation of Charles foreshadows the historical 
features of the new era, and gathers up all that is permanent in 
the Imperial past. It is impossible to conceive of European 
history without it, and the opportunity was unique — it would 
never have occurred again. After 324 years of disuse, the idea 
which the western Imperium represented was still a reality in 
men's minds, and its barren titles were the desire of the bar- 
barian nations. The revival of the Empire in the person of 
Charles was the climax of the faith in the survival of the 
Imperial principle, which accounts for the "Imperatores and 
Basileis" of Britain, the Lombard " Flavii," and the Patricians 
of Rome among the Gothic and Frankish leaders. But it was 
fast fading into a memory, and the rise of the Teutonic king- 
doms had already proclaimed the triumph of separatism and 



THE APPEAL TO THE FEANKS 71 

disorder over the principle of Imperial unity. No one less than 
Charles could have stemmed the tide even now, and no one later 
than he could have attempted it. His success was only partial : 
political unity barely outlasted him, and the forces of disruption 
had won their way before the close of the century. But his 
achievement, incomplete as it was, left a deeper and more 
permanent impression than many a coup d'etat, for it effected 
issues graver than politics and laid foundations too deep for 
anarchy or revolution to touch. To the question as to the 
nature of the achievement of Charlemagne, the whole of papal 
history is an answer. 



CHAPTER IX 
DECAY OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE, ad, 800-867 

THE revival of the Empire was not without its immediate 
effect on the mind of Christendom, but the impression 
was vague, and its significance was barely understood. 
Something momentous had happened — a climax had been 
reached, and a turning-point passed in the world's history. So 
much was dimly grasped by Charlemagne's contemporaries ; but 
the ?xact nature of the change — the consequences which it en- 
tailed, and the problems which were to flow from it — these were 
as yet the secret of the future. It was not until later ages 
brought to light the great mediaeval contest between the Empire 
and the Papacy that the coronation of Charles assumed its right 
historical proportions. 

The years which immediately follow inaugurate the period of 
definition, from which the dual principle of Mediaeval Europe 
gradually emerges. Again and again, with each fresh round of 
the contest, the combatants turn back to the original question 
— What had actually happened at the Coronation of the first 
Mediaeval Emperor ? The Pope claimed that the revival of the 
Empire emanated from him, on the ground that Leo had ne- 
gotiated with Charles, and Leo had bestowed the Crown which 
Charles knelt to receive. The Emperor as consistently urged 
that Charles had won the Empire by his military prowess, and 
owed the legal confirmation of it, not to the papal sanction, but 
to the acclamation of the Roman people. But to talk of " rights " 
was in itself a legal paradox : Charles had no " right," other than 
that which his sword had won for him, to claim the Crown, and 
whatever legal power the Pope might claim in the bestowal of 
it, could at best only have emanated from Constantinople. 
The truth was that the,Coronation was a splendid act of rebellion, 
which might alone made possible, and expediency alone could 
justify. 

According to Eginhard, Leo's act on Christmas Day, 800, was 
a surprise, and an unwelcome one, to Charles, who is said to 
have declared that he would not have entered the basilica had 
he known of the Pope's intention. It is a little difficult to har- 

72 



DECAY OF THE CAEOLINGIAN EMPJBE 73 

monise this statement with the obvious trend of Charles's policy 
in the period which leads up to it. Moreover, Alcuin had 
written to Charles in 799, advising him to go at once to the 
succour of Italy, because " that which we would possess must 
be upheld, in order that we lose not the greater to acquire the 
less ". The Christmas gift, which followed shortly after the 
letter, was addressed, " Ad splendorem Imperialis potentiae," 
showing clearly that Charles's acceptance of the Imperial Crown 
was not only premeditated, but had also been discussed with 
his chief counsellor some time before. But, on the other hand, 
Charles was still negotiating with Byzantium about a marriage 
project with the Empress Irene, and it is quite possible that the 
exact moment which the Pope chose for the ceremony was, 
therefore, not a convenient one for Charles, who would probably 
be anxious to cement the friendship between himself and the 
Empress in every possible way before embarking on an act of 
rebellion. Moreover, support is given to Eginhard's statement 
by the character of the ceremony itself, which in its impressive 
simplicity suggests that the Coronation Act was more or less 
spontaneous. Lastly, hypocrisy was entirely foreign to the 
character of Charles, which, though by no means perfect, was 
incapable of duplicity, or of feigning a regret that he did not 
feel. Probably the truth was that the Coronation was a surprise 
as to the moment of its consummation, but not as to the idea, 
which had already been in the air for a long time. As long as 
four years before the actual date, a mosaic in the triclinium of 
the Lateran represented on the one side, Christ giving the keys 
of the Apostles' grave to Pope Silvester, and the banner of Rome 
to Constantine, while, on the other side, St. Peter bestowed the 
pallium on Leo III., and a standard on Charlemagne. 

Historians of the time like to talk of the " translation " of the 
Empire, in order to emphasise the idea of continuity. The ex- 
pression covers, however, only a surface truth. The mediaeval 
Emperor was only in appearance the successor of Justinian, for 
the life within the Empire was new. It was Teutonic, and soon 
to be feudal. Its universality was a fiction, supported by popu- 
lar allegiance alone : the real spiritual unity had already passed 
to the Church, which had gathered to itself all that was undying 
in the spirit of the Ancient Empire. Charles seems to have 
understood this from the first, for he at once renounced the idea 
of making Rome his capital, and contented himself with enforcing 
his suzerainty in principle. He imposed no new taxes or mili- 
tary burdens on the city, and he respected the limitations which 
the non-interference policy of recent Emperors had imposed on 



?4 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE fAPACt 

Imperial sovereignty in Rome. Legally, however, he insisted on 
the acknowledgment of his supremacy, and from the first his 
Missi held their courts in the city, and his envoys heard the 
appeals of his subjects. 

After Easter, 801, Charles left the affairs of Italy chiefly to 
his sons. Leo, although he was decidedly unpopular, was cap- 
able of maintaining good order, remaining, on the whole, loyal 
to the Empire, which he regarded as his creation. In 814, 
Charles died, and his son, Lewis, whom he had already associated 
with him in the Empire, succeeded him as sole Emperor. It 
was the substitution of weakness for strength, and the effects were 
immediately felt by Leo, in two rebellions of the nobles, in 814 
and 815. It was the person and the policy of Leo that the ris- 
ings were directed against, not apparently the growth of temporal 
power nor the establishment of the new political order. 

Leo's successor, Stephen IV. (816-817), adopts a more depend- 
ent tone towards the Emperor than his predecessor, but a Pope 
could afford to be pliant in his dealings with Lewis the Pious. 
The Emperor, who had in obedience to his father, seized the 
Imperial Crown, and placed it on his own head at Aachen, now 
submitted to receive it again from the hands of the Pope at 
Rheims, thus conceding the principle that papal coronation was 
an indispensable condition of Imperial sovereignty. In return 
for this act of grace, gifts and privileges were showered on 
Stephen by Lewis, whose piety could find no adequate expres- 
sion except in self-abasement before his spiritual compeer. 

Paschalis I. (817-824) ushers in the first period of papal 
triumph. His ordination (for he was a monk) was hurried so as 
to prevent Imperial intervention, — henceforth the first object of 
a Bishop-designate. His reign saw the opening of the dynastic 
struggle which led to the premature downfall of the Carolingian 
dynasty. A revolt against Lewis was headed by Charles's grand- 
son, Bernard, deputy-king of Italy, who had succeeded his 
father, Pipin, in 810. Although he was supported by all the 
elements of disorder of which Italy could boast — always a con- 
siderable contingent — Bernard was obliged to throw himself at 
his uncle's feet before he had had time to organise his forces. 
With cowardly barbarity, Lewis allowed the youth to be blinded, 
in such a way that he died of the effects. The Emperor, in con- 
sequence, submitted to the performance of public penance, 
thus for the first time exposing the Imperial dignity to public 
humiliation. 

Soon after, a more direct triumph fell to the Papacy by a 
successful resistance of Imperial jurisdiction. Paschalis had 



DECAY OF THE CAKOLINGIAN EMPIRE 75 

ordered the execution of two rebel Imperial officials, and called 
down the disapproval of Lewis on his precipitancy. In spite of 
Lewis's attempts to take judicial proceedings, the Pope refused to 
submit to an Imperial trial, and managed to clear himself instead 
by an Oath of Purgation after the manner of his predecessors. 

The reign of Eugenius II. (824-827) is chiefly memorable for 
the imposition of the Constitution of Lothar. The co-Emperor 
— a considerably more effective person than his father — was sent 
to Rome to negotiate m the Imperial interests with the new 
Pope. The last reign had revealed a distinct fall in the Imperial 
prestige : Rome had shown a corresponding disposition to treat 
her Emperor too cheaply. The Constitution of Lothar was 
directed against this growing spirit of independence, and particu- 
larly against the Pope, whose rights, however, are carefully 
respected. The five main points with which it deals are : — 

1. The Imperial Protection, which is carefully defined on the 
principle of the joint authority of the Pope and the Emperor. 
The Pope is to have immediate and initiatory powers, and the 
Emperor appellate jurisdiction. 

2. Personal rights are carefully guarded. Roman and Salic 
law are to exist side by side, the choice between them resting 
with the individual. 

3. Oath of fealty to the Emperor is to be imposed on all 
officials. 

4. Territorial authority of the Pope is carefully laid down 
according to statute. 

5. Papal elections are to be ratified by the Emperor, and the 
oath taken by the Pope in the presence of the Missus " after the 
manner of the election of Eugenius ". 

The attempt of Lothar to establish a modus vivendi between 
Emperor and Pope has, however, a documental rather than an 
historical importance, for it was soon swept away in the vortex 
which destroyed the fortunes of the Carolingian dynasty. In 
829, the House of Lewis the Pious began to divide against itself. 
A fourteen years' struggle of the sons against their father, and 
brother against brother led to the triumph of separatism on the 
field of Auxerre. and the final overthrow of European unity in the 
partition treaty of Verdun, 843. 

Unfortunately, the traditional connection between the Papacy 
and the House of Charlemagne was too strong to allow Pope 
Gregory IV. (827-844) to stand aloof from the household disputes 
which were rapidly overwhelming it. The Pope was moreover 
neither strong enough to arbitrate nor wise enough to improve 
matters by his intervention. In 830, he tried to interfere in 



76 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

person on behalf of the Emperor, when Lewis was a captive in 
the hands of his sons, but the attempt was a failure, and he 
returned to Rome " without honour ". Subsequently, when con- 
science prompted him to reprimand Lothar for his undutiful 
conduct, Gregory had to submit to the pillage of his property, 
and the execution of his officials. By the partition of Verdun, 
in which the Pope had no voice, Italy became incorporated into 
the Middle Kingdom which with the Imperial title passed into 
the hands of Lothar and became known as Lotharingia. 

Meanwhile, the pontificate of Gregory IV. saw the beginning 
of the Saracen invasion of Italy. By 830, the pirate-fanatics had 
practically made themselves masters of Sicily. In 840 they 
gained their first foothold on Italian soil by means of a disputed 
election in Benevento, both sides appealing in turn, with an 
incredible lack of patriotism, to the terrible invader. Once more 
Italy was about to become the prey of a foreign invader, and 
once more the Bishops of Rome come forward as her deliverers. 
In the foundation of the new fortification of Gregoriopolis at Ostia, 
Gregory inaugurated that policy of systematic defence which 
his successors carried on with so much energy and persistence. 

Gregory was not a moment too soon. In the three years' 
reign of his successor Sergius II. (844-847), the Saracens advanced 
as far as Rome itself, and sacked St. Peter's, spoiling the sacred 
shrine of the Apostles, and pillaging the " treasure-house of three 
centuries of art". The valour of Guido of Spoleto eventually 
relieved the beleaguered city, but not before the shock was felt to 
the farthest limits of Christendom. A tax was imposed by 
Lothar throughout the Imperial dominions for the fortification of 
St. Peter's, and Europe suffered its first distraint for the salvation 
of its shrines from Mohammedan desecration. 

The relations of Sergius with the Emperor had not always 
been so harmonious, but the advantage remained with the 
Papacy. At the time of the accession of Sergius, Lothar sent 
his son Lewis to dispute the validity of papal election without 
the Imperial consent, in accordance with the terms of the new 
Constitution. Sergius received the Imperial prince with even 
more than the customary honours, but when Lewis reached 
St. Peter's, he found the doors of the Basilica locked and barred 
against him. The Pope refused to admit him until he had 
gauged the spirit in which he came. Not until he had pledged 
himself to peace was Lewis allowed to present his gift according 
to the custom of his fathers. Finally, together with his Franks, 
he acknowledged Sergius, and received at his hands the 
Imperial Crown. 



DECAY OF THE CAKOLINGIAN EMPIEE 77 

The short reign of Sergius had not passed without dissension 
among the Romans, and his death was followed by a sack of the 
Vatican, which was carried out more ruthlessly than usual. 
The people saw in the Saracen invasion an act of divine 
retribution for the simoniacal practices of the Pope, who with 
his brother is said to have established a tyranny in Rome. The 
strong and weak points of temporal power as a political system 
were never brought into stronger relief than in the time of the 
Saracen invasions. The same Popes who exercise oppression 
over their subjects and mingle ingloriously in the household 
politics of the decadent Carolingians, are found active in 
organising resistance to the foreign invader, and unsparing in 
their self-sacrifice for the defence of their holy places against 
the infidel. 

The climax in the early struggle with the Saracens was 
reached in the reign of the able Leo IV. (847-855). With a 
sagacity born of despair, the southern seaports had formed 
themselves into a league for neutral defence under the auspices 
of the Pope. Leo IV. blessed their enterprise and sent them 
forth, fortified by the Mass and inspired by his own enthusiasm, 
to meet the Saracen fleet off Ostia. The heroism of the 
Neapolitan navy in rowing out to meet the invader brought on 
an immediate action, and the help of a storm gave a decisive 
victory to the defendants. The remnants of the Moorish army 
who reached the Italian shores were taken prisoners by the 
Roman troops, under the leadership of Leo himself, who conveyed 
them back to Rome to swell the labour market for his new 
enterprise. This was the building of the Leonine city, which 
stands as a monument to the sang-froid and energy of the Pope, 
who could conceive and effect a project for adorning Rome with 
new splendours at the very moment when the Saracens were 
overrunning the Campagna and entering into a death-struggle 
with the papal fleet. The magnificence of the consecration of 
the new city in the year 852 kindles the enthusiasm of the most 
pessimistic chroniclers, and no shadow from the impending 
storm-clouds darkens their accounts of the Imperial pageant 
which completed the handiwork of Leo IV. This rapid tran- 
sition from gloomy foreboding to almost irresponsible rejoicing 
is characteristic of the Middle Ages : pageant and calamity 
were never inconsistent; a litany was as festal in its outward 
pomp as a triumphal procession, and the darkest hour of 
mediaeval history is painted in the most glowing colours and the 
richest symbolism. 

Thus, never before in the history of the city were more royal 



78 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

pilgrims attracted to Rome than now in her days of adversity. 
Among them came Ethelwulf of Wessex, hereafter to become a 
monk, with the boy Alfred, to whom the Pope showed more than 
his usual graciousness, anointing him as heir to his father's Crown, 
in spite of the existence of his three elder brothers. Daily a 
fresh contingent flocked to Rome along the pilgrim's way, among 
them most of the saints and a considerable proportion of the 
criminals of Europe. The strange penal code of the time — at 
times the gentlest, and at times the most inhuman ever known — 
prescribed a journey to Rome as the recognised expiation of the 
most heinous crimes which society recognised. Bands of 
murderers and highway robbers, with chained hands and 
sandalled feet, would call at a wayside monastery and demand 
as a right free entertainment at the hands of their religious 
hosts. Occasionally their right-of-way was abused, and Leo on 
one occasion complains to the Emperor that the Imperial Missi 
had molested the pilgrim-sinners, who were under the Pope's 
special protection. 

But the complaint was not very serious, and it is almost the 
only sign we have of ill-feeling between Lewis and Leo, who seem 
to have contrived to keep on unusually good terms with each 
other. The Emperor had made up his mind, however, that Leo's 
successor should be, if not an Imperial nominee, at least one who 
knew how to serve the Emperor's interests in Rome. Such a man 
was Arsenius, Bishop of Portus, but in his own person he was dis- 
qualified for the Papacy by the episcopal office which he already 
held. His son Anastasius was therefore carefully trained up for 
this purpose. But he lacked the wisdom to bide his time until 
everything was prepared, and in the reign of Leo IV. he went 
into opposition. On the election of Leo's successor, Benedict III. 
(855-858), Anastasius attempted to seize the Papacy by force. 
He won over the Imperial envoys, and with their co-operation 
took possession of the Lateran, making the newly-elected Pope his 
prisoner. The loyalty of the Romans, however, saved Rome from 
this act of tyranny, and the fortunes of Anastasius were finally 
overthrown. He ended his days as Abbot of St. Maria Trastavere, 
from which honourable sinecure he henceforth proved innocuous 
to papal policy. 

The strangest of all the legends which afterwards came to be 
attached to the Papacy in the age of its decadence took its date 
from the pontificate of Benedict III. The legend of Pope Joan 
has no place in history other than that which it can claim as 
pointing to the low moral standard which posterity was ready to 
ascribe to the first ages of papal monarchy. The belief that the 



DECAY OF THE CAEOLINGIAN EMPIEE 79 

patriot Pope Leo IV. was succeeded by a woman of infamous 
character, resting as it does on absolutely no foundation, is only 
worthy of notice because of the credulity of fanatical opponents 
of the papal principle in later ages. 

The successor of (Benedict III. was one of the men of genius 
who make the epochs of papal history. Nicholas I. (858-867) owed 
his successes in some measure no doubt to the fact that he owed 
his election to the influence of the Emperor Lewis, who was 
present at the time. He thus embarked free from the embarass- 
ments of Imperial opposition ; but he soon showed an unusual 
capacity to use the good fortune with which he was endowed. 
Everything seemed to conspire to break the new harmony be- 
tween the Papacy and the Empire thus established, but when- 
ever discord threatened, Nicholas held fast to the dominant. 

From the familiar quarter of Ravenna, the first troubles 
came. John, the Archbishop, had oppressed the papal subjects 
in Emilia and appealed against the wrath of the Pope to the 
Emperor. Lewis sent him back to Rome with Imperial Missi to 
support him in his defence. Nicholas, however, took his stand 
on the spiritual prerogative, which gave him an assured victory. 
John was proclaimed heterodox, and the Missi contumacious 
for associating themselves with him. The Decree of 769, for- 
bidding foreign interference in papal elections, was revived by 
the way to remind Lewis of his obligations. The affair ended 
in a visit of Nicholas to Ravenna, where he calmed the agitated 
populace and received the submission of the Archbishop. 

Meanwhile, a more serious entanglement was brought about 
by a domestic tragedy in the household of the Emperors brother. 
Lothar of Lotharingia had divorced his innocent wife. Thiutberga, 
for the sake of his mistress, and obtained by bribery the sanction 
of his act by the Synod of Metz. Nicholas, zealous for the purity 
of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and indignant at the connivance 
of the Frankish Bishops with the king's immoral practices, 
fulminated against the Synod, reversed its decrees, and excom- 
municated its members. Following the example of John of 
Ravenna, the Bishops appealed to the Emperor, representing to 
Lewis that the Imperial dignity was compromised in the Pope's 
action against his brother. Lewis accordingly descended on 
Rome, urged on by the Bishops, to punish the Pope. The dignity 
and wisdom of Nicholas saved the situation. He withdrew to 
St. Peter's by night, and remained there two days in prayer, 
vouchsafing no reply to the Emperor's vituperations, and main- 
taining an awe-inspiring calmness in the face of his defiance. 
An interview with Lewis in the Lateran followed, in which the 



80 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Emperor failed to bend the Pope to his will. The Bishops 
damaged their own cause by their demeanour ; they laid on the 
shrine of St. Peter a document expressed in terms of extravagant 
defiance which failed to draw any reply. They shocked public 
opinion by suffering their followers to attack an ecclesiastical 
procession and break the Cross of St. Helena, which was believed 
to contain portions of the True Cross. Lewis withdrew to 
Ravenna, but not before he had formally reconciled himself with 
the outraged Pope, who had not launched his spiritual weapons 
in vain. Lothar of Lotharingia was persuaded, for a time at 
least, to conform to the moral law as interpreted by the Pope, 
and his unfortunate wife was compelled to continue her life of 
torture at his side. 

Unlike most of the Popes of this period, Nicholas did not 
allow the papal-imperial struggle to absorb his whole energies. 
An interesting illustration of his constructive statesmanship is 
supplied by the so-called Bulgarian constitution. The Slav 
king, Boris of Bulgaria, pathetically harassed by the conflicting 
doctrines of the Eastern and Western missionaries, referred 
his difficulties to the Pope as the fountain of doctrinal interpre- 
tation. In 866, Boris sent his son to Rome bearing gifts which 
were magnificent enough to excite the jealousy of Lewis, who 
coveted Bulgaria for the Empire. Nicholas, however, tactfully 
smoothed over the situation, and sent his famous " Responsa " 
to the Bulgarian king. From the answers of the Pope to the 
questions referred to him by Boris can be gathered an almost 
complete code for a barbaric nation, and in this respect the work 
of Nicholas has been compared to the Jesuit Constitution of 
Paraguay. The Bulgarian king is exhorted on the subjects of 
daily life, social conduct, customs of war, and — predominantly of 
course — his relationship to the Clergy. Among other things, 
Boris is instructed how to dress, what to eat, how to prepare for 
battle, and how to treat the vanquished. In conduct he is to be 
merciful, and humble in his bearing, for the ideals set before 
him are those of the new world — of feudalism, as it was already 
known to Europe, and of chivalry, which owed its origin 
essentially to the mediaeval Church. 

But the pontificate of Nicholas, looked at as a whole, is 
greater than any of his single achievements. The fact that he 
was the first Pope to be crowned with the papal tiara is 
significant, for in him papal monarchy finds its first conscious 
expression. Other Popes had exercised a prerogative as wide — 
a few of his predecessors had seen with the eyes of vision the 
ideal which Nicholas realised. But no one before him had 



DECAY OF THE CAKOLINGIAN EMPIEE 81 

taken papal supremacy so completely for granted, or forced the 
world to recognise and acknowledge it as the pivot of the 
European political system. His personal attributes were largely 
but not entirely responsible. The decay of the Carolingian 
Empire left Europe without a political leader, and the Papacy 
was undoubtedly the most natural power to fill the breach. 
The deferential attitude of particular Carolingian princes — 
above all, of Lewis the Pious — had contributed to the growth 
of the idea of spiritual dominion which the consolidation of 
the national divisions of Europe had tended to define. Lastly, 
the famous Isidorian decretals, which were compiled at this time 
by an unscrupulous French monk, collected all the fictionary 
papal documents, beginning with the Donation of Constantine, 
into a producible warrant. Nicholas was the first Pope to make 
use of this fraudulent charter of prerogative, which gained 
universal acceptance in the credulous age which is responsible 
for it, and was probably implicitly believed in by the Popes 
themselves. 

In his personal merits, his intrepidity, and his persistence, as 
well as his rarer gifts of political originality, Nicholas I. is 
worthy to be called the forerunner of Gregory VII. 



CHAPTER X 

ARISTOCRATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES, 

a.d. 867-954 

NICHOLAS was not an easy Pope to succeed. His 
individuality had stamped itself on the politics of his 
age, and he left behind him strong enemies and 
ardent admirers, who combined in hostility to his successor, 
Adrian II. (867-872). Adrian was a well-intentioned man of 
compromise, without much initiative or strength of purpose. 
He was accused by the partisans of his predecessor of annulling 
the decrees of Nicholas, and in his anxiety to clear himself from 
this charge he incurred the epithet of " Nicholaite " from the 
other party. 

He persisted in maintaining the impossible domestic relations 
of Lothar and Thiutberga, and terrorised the cowardly sinner 
into perjury, by making him swear that he had abjured the 
illicit society of his lover ever since the arbitration of Nicholas. 

In 871, the Emperor Lewis took the Sultan prisoner at Bari, 
and thereby kindled the jealousy of Basil and the Emperor of 
the East. In order to smooth over the situation, Lewis wrote a 
letter to Basil, which is interesting for the light which it throws 
on the theory of Imperial election, as it was interpreted at this 
time. Lewis ascribes his right to the title of the Imperium to 
the sanction of the Roman people, as expressed by the acclama- 
tion at the Coronation of Charles — " From the Romans received 
we this name and this dignity". Even without the confirmation 
of the Pope the claim would hold good, and he illustrates this 
by reference to previous Emperors crowned without papal 
consent, but he recognises at the same time that "the divine 
operation through papal consecration " gives added validity to 
a title already established. 

They were brave words coming as they did from the last of 
the Carlings who was worthy of the tradition of his House, on 
the eve of its final humiliation. In the same year as his letter 
to Basil, Lewis was taken prisoner by Adelchis of Benevento, who 
was said to be in league with the Sultan. In spite of the 

82 



ARISTOCRATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES 83 

consolation which Adrian hastened to administer by a repetition 
of the Coronation ceremony in Rome. Lewis never recovered 
from the blow thus dealt at his Imperial honour. He died soon 
after in the middle of his Saracen campaign, but not before he 
had brought the treacherous Duke of Benevento to his feet and 
forced him to sue for pardon through the intercession of the new 
Pope ; John VIII. (872-882). 

In the reign of John VIII.. the doom of the Papacy became 
apparent. It had been too long and too closely associated with 
the tangled politics of the Carling House not to share in its 
decay. Of the two branches which contended for the Imperial 
crown in 875, the Pope naturally turned to the Frankish line, and 
threw his support unreservedly on to the side of Charles the 
Bald. The connection of the Popes had always been closer with 
the Franks than with the Germans, owing partly to circumstance, 
partly to geographical conditions, and partly to the undefinable 
kinship of national character which exists between the Italians 
and the Franks of every age. 

The opposition party, headed by Formosus, Bishop of Portus, 
favoured Charles the Fat of Germany, but the weight of papal 
influence, which the long purse of the Franks secured, held the 
balance at first in favour of Charles the Bald. From 875 to 
877. the Frankish line maintained its ascendancy., but on the 
death of Charles the Bald, the Imperial Crown was once more 
open to competition. Lambert of Spoleto descended on Rome, 
and took the Pope prisoner in the name of Charles the Fat. John, 
however, escaped to France, and espoused the cause of Lewis 
the Stammerer. But the Pope soon saw that his loyalty to the 
Frankish line would avail him nothing : Lewis was a " roi 
faineant." who let his chances slip. His son-in-law. Boso of 
Aries, showed more energy, but he was hopelessly defeated by 
the representative of the German line, who attained his goal in 
879. 

John VIII. had the wisdom to make a virtue of necessity. 
He received the new Emperor with a show of cordiality, which 
failed to deceive either party. For three years they maintained 
a studied neutrality under the cloak of superficial friendship. 
John, meanwhile, showed remarkable energy in organising the 
Saracen campaign, inspiring the formation of a papal navy, and 
paving the way for a united stand in South Italy by confirming 
the lukewarm loyalty of the Southern ports. But the Emperor 
held sullenly aloof, and refused to join his efforts for the salva- 
tion of Italy to those of the Pope. 

John VIII. died in 882 — the last of the great Popes of the 



84 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

ninth century. He is said to have been poisoned by|his enemies 
of the German party. He had done what he could to save the 
Papacy from its inevitable fate, but he was just too late. At the 
beginning of his pontificate, the Papacy was already identified 
with a party : at the end it passed into the hands of a faction. 

During the next ten years, Marinus I. (882-884) and Stephen 
V. (885-891) watched with powerless inactivity the contest for the 
Imperium between Guido of Spoleto and Berengar of Friuli — 
both Carlings on the female side. The whole of Italy, including 
the Papacy itself, became absorbed in the contemplation of a 
guerilla war between two insignificant factions, for the pos- 
session of a barren title to which neither side had any but the 
most shadowy claim. The inglorious struggle ended in the 
Coronatiou of the Duke of Spoleto in 891, but he died in the 
same year, leaving his dearly-bought dignity to his young son, 
Lcmbert. The new Pope, Formosus, who succeeded Stephen in 
891, after a violent and aggressive career, played fast and loose 
with Lambert, professing to care for him, and his interests as a 
father, while he intrigued behind his back with Arnulf of Ger- 
many. Invited by Formosus, this Arnulf suddenly descended 
on Italy, took Rome, which was inadequately defended by Lam- 
bert's mother, and ended his meteoric adventure in defeat after 
a paralytic stroke on his way home. Formosus barely outlived 
Arnulf, and met the posthumous reward of the duplicity of his 
life in the scandalous post-mortem trial which disgraces the 
pontificate of Stephen VI. (896-897) . Stephen was a staunch parti- 
san of Lambert of Spoleto, but the act of vindictive sacrilege 
which makes his pontificate notorious in papal history is in no 
way characteristic of the chivalrous young idol of Italy who 
now inherited the burden of the Imperium. The body of For- 
mosus, clad in pontifical vestments, was submitted to a barbaric 
mock-trial, and after condemnation, stripped of the ceremonial 
garments, and thrown into the Tiber. But the conscience of 
Rome was stricken by the outrage, and some few priests, whom 
Formosus had consecrated, ventured to defend the dishonoured 
memory of their patron. One of these reminded the Romans 
that it had always been their way to maltreat their benefactors, 
and put them to death. The shaft went home : stung by the 
taunt of ingratitude, the populace rose against Stephen VI., and 
strangled him in the name of Formosus. He was succeeded by 
Romanus, of whom nothing is recorded but his death, which oc- 
curred in the fourth month of his pontificate. His successor, 
Theodore II., lived just long enough to do honour to the remains 
of Formosus, which were discovered by a fisherman in the Tiber. 



AKISTOCRATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES 85 

John IX. (898-900) formally condemned the " Corpse Synod," 
and sealed his allegiance to the German party by the coronation 
of Lambert. This accomplished, Pope and Emperor worked to- 
gether for the restoration of law and order in Rome, but the 
premature death of Lambert, after a fall from his horse, shattered 
the hopes of those who had seen the possibility in him of effect- 
ing a united Italy. His death re-opened the contest for the 
Imperium, and his party transferred their favour to Lewis of 
Provence, who could trace Carolingian descent through his 
father, Count Boso. His opponent, Berengar of Friuli, was 
urged by defeat into betraying Italy to the Hungarians, an act 
for which he can no more be held personally responsible than 
those who forced his hand. The decay of papal authority had 
thrown Italy into the hands of the nobles, who appreciated the 
idea of Italian unity as little as they knew how to effect it. 

John IX. was succeeded by Benedict IV. (900-903), " a mild 
and priest-like man," who made no attempt to originate a policy, 
and contented himself with further cementing the papal allegi- 
ance to the German House by crowning Lewis of Provence. 
Leo V., who succeded Benedict in 903, fell a victim to the ambi- 
tion of Cardinal Anastasius. With him died the eighth Pope in 
the eight years of papal history. These rapid successions 
showed, if proof were necessary, that papal power was following 
the Carolingian Empire to its fall. 

The death of Leo V. inaugurates the period of tyranny by 
the civic nobility, which henceforth put the Papacy into com- 
mission, maintaining it as a peg on which to hang their own 
ambitions. The household of Theophylact soon raised itself 
above its equals, chiefly owing to the influence of two remark- 
able women. While Theophylact gradually accumulated in his 
own person all the chief offices of the papal court, his wife, 
Theodora, by her charms and her personality, held sway in 
Rome with almost absolute authority. It was through her 
influence that the energetic villain, Sergius II., was elected to 
the Papacy in 904, having assisted himself in its attainment to 
the extent of effecting the death of his two predecessors. He 
proved a better Pope than might have been expected. He 
restored the bishopric of Silva Candida, which the Saracens had 
robbed of the sources of its endowment. He re-established the 
Convent Corsarum, which had suffered the same fate, on condition 
that a hundred kyries should be sung daily by the nuns for his 
soul. We may hope that the condition was faithfully kept, for 
we owe to him the re-building of the Lateran, and the preservation 
pf all that it holds of historic interest and decorative beauty. 



86 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

Sergius II. was succeeded by two insignificant men, Anastasius, 
the Roman (911-913), and Lands, a Lombard (913-914), who doubt- 
less placed their bishopric at the disposal of the wife of Theophy- 
lact. The sway of Theodora was now shared by her more 
beautiful daughter Marozia, who through the instrumentality of 
three successive husbands controlled the history of Rome and 
the Papacy for the next fifteen years. Since the days of Eudoxia 
and Amalasuntha, there had been a conspicuous absence of 
prominent women in the records of the city, and their reappear- 
ance at this time is significant. Mediaeval Rome was a clerical 
city, and the ascendancy of Theodora and Marozia testifies to a 
temporary triumph of secularism over the ecclesiastical system. 
There was nothing noble in the tyranny which these two women 
exercised over the affairs of the city. No large political issues 
dignified their intrigues, and all their fascinations and wiles were 
exsrcised in the service of their personal gratification. The 
moral decadence of the society which they created has never 
been surpassed, but their vices lacked distinction, and their 
sway had none of the brilliance which has often accompanied 
the decadent phases of European history. 

Theodora's influence did however justify itself in the appoint- 
ment to the Papacy of John X. (914-928), who was possibly her 
lover, and certainly the first statesman of his age. About the 
same time Marozia married Alberic, a German soldier of fortune, 
who is known to history as the forerunner of the " condottieri, " 
who play so large a part in the story of Italy. Through these 
two men — the Pope and the warrior — the influence of the wife 
and daughter of Theophylact made itself paramount in the 
immediate future. With remarkable activity John devoted 
himself to the Saracen war. He formed a league with the 
turbulent nobles of the South, and even enlisted the help of the 
Eastern Emperor, who had by now forgotten to bear his grudge 
against Italy. With Alberic as his vice-gerent, the Pope gained 
a memorable series of victories in the valley of the Garigliane, 
which resulted in the expulsion of the enemy from South Italy. 
John and Alberic returned in triumph to Rome, conscious of 
having carried through between them a great enterprise, and 
earned the gratitude of their countrymen. But Rome was sunk 
too low to do her patriots honour, and a vortex of political 
intrigue swept away the fortunes of the two heroes of the 
Saracen campaign. 

In order to gratify the Imperial sentiment of the people, 
Theodora and the Pope had summoned Berengar of Friuli to 
take up the Imperium which had lain useless and idle in the 



AKISTOCKATIC TYRANNY AND SUBJECT POPES 87 

hands of Lewis of Provence. In 915, Berengar entered Rome 
and was received with a magnificence worthy of a nobler epoch. 
While the scholae sang their "laudes," two goodly youths 
advanced to do homage to the Emperor-elect. These were the 
son of Theophylact and the brother of the Pope, and in their 
joint act Berengar might read the symbol of Roman society. 
For eight years Berengar passively carried on the tradition of 
the Western Empire, until he was assassinated in 924 by his son- 
in-law, Adalbert. The death of Berengar marks the extinction of 
the Empire as a national concern. The temporal leadership of 
Europe had passed away from Italy for ever. The very title of 
Emperor, which had lingered on so persistently after the Empire 
had fallen to pieces, was henceforth suffered to lapse. The 
" dark ages " were dark indeed in the hour when the eternity of 
the Roman Empire was forgotten. 

Rudolf of Burgundy retained the Crown of Italy for three 
years after the death of Berengar, and was then overthrown by 
Irmengard, the daughter of Berengar, who is said to have 
rivalled Cleopatra by her charm, and outshone in physical 
beauty her contemporary Marozia. The Pope joined Irmengard 
in espousing the cause of her step-brother Hugo, and thus brought 
about his own ruin. The personal ascendancy of another 
woman in Italy stung Marozia into opposition. The death of 
Alberic had left her free to offer her hand to Guido of Tuscany, 
another son of the late Emperor, who could boast as good a 
claim to the Empire as his step-brother Hugo. In the interests 
of Guido, Marozia plotted to bring about the fall of John X. 
For two years longer he managed to hold his own through the 
support of his brother Peter, but a surprise attack on the Lateran, 
in 928, finally overwhelmed him. He lingered a year in a 
dungeon, in the Castle of St. Angelo, where he closed his brilliant 
career in a manner which was becoming characteristic of the 
Popes. 

After two Popes, concerning whom we know nothing at all — 
Leo VI. and Stephen VII. — Marozia achieved the climax of her 
ambition in the election of her son to the Papacy as John XL 
(931-936). Her third marriage in the following year was the 
initial step which brought her to ruin. Her third husband was 
the same Hugo whom she had formerly opposed — the protege of 
her rival, and the opponent of the late lamented Guido. Hugo 
was typical of his age, bold and brutal, with an outward show of 
chivalry and piety which belied every action which is recorded 
of him. He found his worst enemy in his young step-son, the 
boy Alberic, whom his mother unwisely pressed into the service 



88 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of her new lord. A trivial quarrel turned the sullen hatred of 
Alberic into open hostility, which rapidly developed into re- 
bellion. Inciting the mob against the tyranny of his mother, 
Alberic overthrew Hugo, who fled in ignominy from the city, 
and seized and imprisoned both Marozia and his brother the 
young Pope. Alberic held the reins of government as " Prince 
and Senator of all the Romans ". In spite of the verdict of con- 
temporary records, the dictatorship of Alberic was by no means 
a calamity for the city. It is true that he deprived the Papacy 
of all its temporal power, and kept his brother the Pope in 
honourable captivity. But the political tutelage of the Church 
gave it its chance to recover from the moral degradation which 
the association of the Papacy with the House of Theophylact 
had brought about. The subjection of the Popes to Alberic was 
a salutary humiliation ; it drove them back to look for their 
spiritual weapons, and finding them blunted by lack of use, they 
turned to the armoury of moral reform. The death of his 
brother John XI. enabled Alberic to elect in his stead a tractable 
Benedictine Pope, whose conception of the papal office coincided 
with his own. Leo VII. (936-939) cheerfully renounced all claim 
to temporal power, and espoused the cause of the new monastic 
reform, which was fraught with importance for the future of 
papal history. 

More than a century of deterioration had reduced the 
Benedictine rule to a dead letter, and brought the monasteries 
to a condition which awoke a sense of tragedy in the generation 
of Odo of Cluny. In the tenth century, which is comparable in 
this and in other respects to the fifteenth, ideas were all in the 
crucible, and it was doubtful what would emerge. The monastic 
vocation was no longer taken for granted as a guarantee of future 
salvation ; it was bound up too closely with the mystic conception 
of spiritual dominion, which the Imperium had gone far to 
eclipse. Charles the Great had helped the monasteries down- 
ward by the practice of bestowing them as fiefs on lay barons, 
and the Saracen raids had completed the work which the forces 
of secularism had begun. 

That a reaction set in early in the tenth century was due 
partly to the political necessity of finding a raison d'etre for the 
Church which had been deprived of all its worldly power, and 
partly to the individual efforts of Odo of Cluny. The Loyola of 
his age, Odo travelled about in France and Italy preaching the 
cause of the new monasticism, pointing to Monte Cassino and 
Subiaco, and contrasting the ignoble present with the glorious 
pa6t. Cluniac reform became the watchword of the hour: 



AKISTOCEATIC TYEANNY AND SUBJECT POPES 89 

Leo VII. brought it to Rome, and Alberic associated it with his 
policy of government. The bandit monks of Farfa, who used 
their charter as a pretext for licentious living, and terrorised the 
countryside with their lawless rapacity, were forcibly expelled 
from their haunts, and in time at least Italy was purged from 
the worst evils of corrupt monasticism. 

After Leo VII., three more Popes were created by Alberic, 
reigning at his discretion, and according to his political 
principles. Stephen VIII. (939-942) seems to have been un- 
fortunate, and suffered mutilation probably in an attempt to 
shake off the yoke of Alberic. In any case his enterprise failed, 
and we read that he took refuge in solitude and misanthropy. 
Stephen was succeeded by Marinus II. (942-946), " a gentle and 
peace-loving man," who never swerved in his obedience to the 
secular master of Rome. Under Agapitus II. (946-955), the first 
symptom of unrest made itself felt, in the assumption of the 
title of King of Italy by Berengar of Ivrea. His project was 
merely the signal for a mightier than he to approach. Invited 
by the Pope to deliver Italy from Berengar, Otto the Great 
began to rebuild in his mind the Empire of Charlemagne. At 
the same time the power of Alberic tottered and fell. He 
succeeded before he died in securing the election of his son 
Octavian to the Papacy as John XII. But a self-willed boy of 
sixteen, with his character already undermined by his training 
in luxury, was no fit successor to a beneficent despot, whose 
only claim to his subjects' obedience was his power to make 
himself acceptable to them. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE BEGINNINGS OF REFORM : THE POPES AND THE OTTOS, 

a.d. 955-1046 

THE fundamental weakness which underlay the conception 
of the mediaeval Papacy was its inability to stand alone. 
Spiritual authority was insufficient by itself to secure 
the supremacy of Rome : the claims of St. Peter — even when 
they were advanced by the worthiest of his successors — required 
the weight of the Roman Empire to give them force. Temporal 
power in the tenth century was merely an expression. The 
Donations and Deeds of Gift, however generous they might 
appear on paper, always contained an implied condition. The 
King or the Emperor bestowed the lands — in so far as they were 
his to give : they became the property of the Church, provided 
the Pope could make good his possession. 

Hence the Papacy continually found itself on the horns of a 
dilemma. Obliged by the nature of things to take refuge behind 
a privileged defender, the Popes had to choose between the 
perpetual domination of some adjacent or co-existing authority 
and the intermittent protection of a strong exterior power. If 
the one was inconveniently near, the other was obviously too far 
away. Viewed in the light of a protector, the civic nobility of 
Rome was more effective than the distant German King, but 
protection and oppression were too often interchangeable terms, 
and if the Alps formed an obstacle in the way of the former, 
they were no less a defence against the latter. 

The interest of the tenth century lies in the fluctuation of 
the papal fortunes between these two alternatives. There was 
also a third, but the times were too barbarous, and political 
thought was too crude to do it justice. The cause of nationalism, 
as represented by Lambert of Spoleto, and at this particular 
juncture by Berengar of Ivrea, never had any real chance of 
success. Italy was racially too diffuse and geographically too 
incoherent for the consciousness of national unity to gain any 
real hold : besides, there was nothing in the idea which appealed 
to the mind of the tenth century Italian. The Roman Empire 

90 



THE BEGINNINGS OF KEEOKM 91 

was a cause to die for — so was the Universal Church — so also in 
its way was the principle of disorder — lawlessness — rebellion — 
and the exhilarating strife of factions. But the lord of Ivrea 
with his handful of knights — who was he that the Tuscan 
peasants should flock to his standard, or the nobles of the 
Campagna set aside their own feuds in his service ? If the Pope 
wanted a protector, let him appeal to Caesar across the Alps, and 
let Rome delight once more in the splendour of an Imperial 
Coronation, with its inevitable sequel of carnage in the streets. 

Thus the appeal to Otto the Great was urgent in its demand 
and general in the direction from which it came. Invited first 
by Agapitus in 951, Otto had justified his German reputation in 
the defeat of Berengar of Ivrea, whe fell back at his approach 
without making a stand. With the vision of Charles already 
before his eyes, Otto proposed to press on to Rome, and sent 
envoys to the Pope to arrange for his reception. But Alberic had 
not yet made over his power to his son, and the would-be 
Emperor was met with a flat refusal from the Senator of Rome. 
Otto recognised that his attempt was premature : he therefore 
contented himself with consolidating his interests in North 
Italy by completing the subjection of Berengar, and by 
marrying Adelaide, the widow of the late King Lothar, who had 
headed in her own name the invitation which had brought the 
German King to Italy. 

The son of Alberic afforded to Otto the opportunity which his 
father had denied. The young Octavian, already " Prince and 
Senator," succeeded Agapetas as Pope just before the death of 
his father, in 954, taking the name of John XII. Anyone might 
have staggered under the weight of so crushing a burden of 
power, and the boy-Pope had not even passed through the ordi- 
nary apprenticeship of government. He brought to his task a 
considerable amount of natural energy, which might, under 
more favourable circumstances, have developed into a real 
capacity for ruling. But whatever he might have become, he 
certainly showed no signs of fulfilling any promise except that 
which his precocious vices foretold. He opened his pontificate 
with a disastrous expedition against the southern duchies, which 
induced him to summon Otto to the rescue. Meanwhile, his 
enemies were bringing their influence to bear in the same direc- 
tion, and a formidable list of charges against the Pope was com- 
piled for his undoing. 

Otto came to Pavia in 961, and received the various embassies 
of his Italian well-wishers. The indictment of John he brushed 
aside with half-humorous contempt: "he is a boy: the ex- 



92 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

ample of good men may reform him ". Early in January, 962, 
Otto journeyed to Rome, having sworn to keep faith with his 
young host, who, in return, undertook to hold no dealings with 
Berengar, or his son, Adalbert. In spite of the apparent under- 
standing, Otto was ill at ease in Rome. Even at the time of 
the Coronation itself, he ordered Ansfried of Louvain to stand 
near and protect him with his spear as he knelt before St. Peter's 
tomb. His suspicions, moreover, were not without foundation. 
Hardly had he left the city when the Pope, chafing under the 
yoke of his protector, which, as usual, proved irksome at close 
quarters, re-opened his intrigues with Berengar, and with 
scarcely veiled treachery threw off his allegiance to the Emperor 
whom he had just crowned. 

The result of this was Otto's second expedition to Rome in 
963. He arrived to find the city in a state of unwonted quiet : 
John XII. had gone off hunting — his most serious offence in the 
eyes of his critics ! — and the Cardinals and Bishops were ready 
to submit his conduct to the Emperor. The tenth century 
showed no leniency towards wild oats. The accusation against 
the boy-Pope brought before Otto was long and serious enough to 
cover the career of a veteran. A considerable number of real 
crimes, and a pitiable proportion of vices, were brought to his 
charge ; but the emphasis was laid in almost every case on the 
follies and neglects which were the natural outcome of his train- 
ing in despotism, and his youth. He had neglected to attend 
matins, — he had not been frequent at Mass. He had devoted 
his time to field sports and amours. He had " drunk to Venus 
and other devils " in a Lateran orgy. In short, he had proved 
himself unworthy of the pontificate in all that he had done and 
said. 

Otto summoned the Pope in respectful language three times, 
and eventually received a reply from the hunting-field, which 
was both spirited and illiterate : "John Bishop, servant of the 
servants of God, to all the bishops — We have heard that you 
want to appoint another Pope. If you do so, I will excommuni- 
cate you by Almighty God, and you shall not ordinate nobody, or 
celebrate Mass." 

John's ultimatum, thus crudely expressed, left Otto no choice 
but to depose him " because of his reprobate life ". In his place 
Otto appointed Leo VIII. , a man of indecisive character and 
blameless reputation, who was unable to hold his own against 
the hostile forces of the anti- German party. It was probably 
at this time that Otto was supposed to have deprived the 
Romans of their rights, by enforcing upon them an oath by 



THE BEGINNINGS OF EEFOEM 93 

which they undertook not to elect or ordain any Pope without 
his or his son's consent. The Pope designate, moreover, was to 
swear allegiance to the Emperor in the presence of the Imperial 
Missi. The form of the oath, as far as can be judged from the 
rather meagre accounts of the chroniclers, was, however, identi- 
cal with that which Lothar imposed in 824. Why, then, does 
Liutprand, the biographer of Otto, emphasise the surrender of 
electoral rights by the Roman people in 964 ? It seems prob- 
able that the innovation belonged rather to the region of fact 
than of theory, and even the practical change was probably 
over-estimated by the Imperial biographer. The theory re- 
mained the same as in the time of Lothar, but since the year 
824, no Emperor had been strong enough to make good his 
claim to supersede the electoral rights of the people. This, at 
least, is a possible solution of the difficult problem which the 
so-called Privilege of Otto suggests. In return for the conces- 
sion — whether it was new or founded upon precedent — Otto con- 
firmed the previous donations which gave to the Papacy the 
Duchy of Rome, part of the Sabine and Tuscan territory, and 
the exarchate of Ravenna. To this was to be added the Cam- 
pagna, with the " restitution " of Naples, and Gaeta, Fundi, and 
Sicily, as soon as they could be conquered from the Saracens. 

In 964, John XII. returned to Rome, and began to rally his 
forces. The anti-German party had been growing in strength 
ever since Otto's Coronation, and Leo VIIL, unable to stand 
against it, was obliged to fly for protection to Otto. But John 
XII. could not concentrate his energies for decisive action. An 
amorous adventure cost him his life just at the moment when 
he had regained his undeserved ascendancy in Rome. The 
sword of an injured husband freed Rome from the tyranny of 
the last of the Theophylacts, and the Papacy from the ignominy 
which his reckless, if not altogether responsible, profligacy had 
brought upon it. 

To fill his place as anti-pope, his partisans elected the gram- 
maticus Benedict V. Otto, however, descended on the distracted 
city, and replaced Leo VIIL for a few more months of sovereignty, 
carrying back to Germany in triumph the ex-king, Berengar, 
and the would-be anti-pope. 

Leo VIIL barely survived his restoration. He was succeeded 
by another descendent of Theophylact, who so far departed from 
the tradition of his House that he reigned as the candidate of 
the German party, and, like his predecessor, was driven to take 
refuge at the side of Otto from the revolution which convulsed 
the city soon after his election. A counter-revolution in the 



94 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

following year, however, enabled the new Pope, John XIII., to 
return to Rome, supported by the rumour that Otto was pre- 
paring for an expedition against the city. The clemency of the 
Emperor had been tried too long by the instability of Rome, and 
he set out, for the fourth time, with vengeance in his train. The 
authors of the rebellion were mutilated and put to death, and 
Peter the Prefect was hung by the hair from the equestrian 
statue of Marcus Aurelius. 

Soon after the suppression of this revolt, John XIII. found a 
surer means of securing his position in the city. In spite of 
the energy of Otto, Imperial protection had broken down : John, 
therefore, turned to the alternative force of defence, and intro- 
duced a new factor in the complicated balance of Papal-Imperial 
politics by his alliance with the House of Crescentius. During 
the next half century, the Crescentines play less conspicuously, 
and, on the whole, more creditably, the part which the Theophy- 
lacts had played in an earlier generation. But whereas Theophy- 
lact had founded the supremacy of his House by making the 
Popes his creatures, Crescentius of the Marble Horse owed his 
personal ascendancy, and the subsequent fortunes of his family, 
to the patronage of John XIII. John's plan was to dwarf the 
hostile nobility of Rome by deliberately raising one House 
above the rest. He did not foresee the danger which inevit- 
ably underlay his policy, and he did not live long enough to 
learn it by experience. 

The last recorded act of John XIII. was the marriage of the 
Emperor's son, Otto, whom he had already crowned co-Emperor, 
with the Eastern princess Theophano. The wedding was both 
picturesque and momentous. Otto had long been suing for 
her hand, but the father of Theophano, Nicephorus Phocas, had 
haughtily withheld his consent. Her stepfather, John Zimisces, 
who had supplanted her parent, was more amenable, and in 972 
the beautiful sixteen-year-old bride was conducted with great 
honour to her husband in Rome. Otto II. was a clever and 
attractive youth of seventeen, with the heart of a hero concealed 
in his small, slight body. 

In the same year John XIII. died and was succeeded, after an 
interval of schism, by Benedict VI. (973-974), who owed his 
security on the throne of S. Peter to the last efforts of Otto the 
Great. 

Otto himself died in May of the same year. His achievements 
were great, but their character was purely personal. His 
dominion was an empire only in name : Germany was distracted 
by feudal and national forces which his constitution had been 



THE BEGINNINGS OF REFOEM 95 

unable to touch ; Italy had summoned him in her hour of 
need and resented it when he answered her call. Like his fore- 
runner, Charlemagne, he had been invited by the Pope, and like 
him had subjugated the Papacy. But the Popes of the ninth 
century had instantly set to work to emancipate themselves, 
whereas the Papacy under the Ottos was not in a position to do 
so. The dirge of the monk of Soracte gives a clue to the senti- 
ment of the Italian who watched from the Campagna the 
descents of the German kings — " Woe to Rome ! oppressed and 
down-trodden by so many nations. Thou art taken captive by 
the Saxon king, thy people are judged by the sword. . . . Thou 
who wast a mother art become a daughter — thou wast too 
beautiful " (Benedict of Soracte). 

The death of Otto was the signal for rebellion in Rome against 
German domination as personified by Benedict VI. The Cres- 
centii soon gave proof of the dangerous eminence to which John 
XIII. had raised them. Headed by Crescentius de Theodora the 
rebels seized the unfortunate Pope and strangled him in the 
castle of S. Angelo. In his place they put forward the " monster " 
Boniface VII., the son of Ferrucius. The subsequent events of 
the rebellion are unknown to us. There seems to have been a 
reaction, which led to the flight of Boniface to Byzantium and 
the election of the pious Bishop of Sutri by the Emperor Otto II. 
Benedict VII. (974-983) was a zealous champion of Cluniac 
reform, and his pontificate seems to have been entirely taken up 
with the restoration of monasteries, particularly of the influential 
and beautiful House dedicated to SS. Boniface and Alexis, which 
was destined to become the source of Slavonic evangelisation. 

In 980 Otto II. came in peace to Rome. Benedict VII. had en- 
treated him to come and deliver south Italy from the Saracens, 
who were pressing harder than ever on the papal frontiers. The 
Greeks, moreover, were engaged in an attempt to recover Capua 
and Benevento, and the situation was desperate enough to 
demand instant alleviation. 

The expedition of Otto was not fortunate. He was defeated 
by the Saracens at Stilo, and narrowly escaped being kidnapped 
by the Greeks in a naval enterprise in which he had shown ex- 
cessive personal daring. He rejoined the Pope at Verona, where 
the infant Otto III. was crowned by Benedict VII. just before 
his death in 983. The death of the Pope recalled Otto to Rome, 
where he negotiated the election of his chancellor, Peter of Pavia, 
as John XIV. (983-984). Exhausted by the excessive demand 
which Italy had made on the delicate young Emperor, Otto II. 
died in Rome in the winter of his twenty-eighth year, and, alone 



96 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of all the German Emperors of Rome, was buried in the crypt of 
St. Peter's. 

John XIV. must have trembled for his own safety as he stood 
by the grave of Otto II. Germany demanded the instant return 
of the child Otto III. and the Imperial regent Theophano, and 
already the inevitable anti-German spirit was making itself felt 
in Rome. Early in 984, the anti-pope Boniface VII., who had 
fled to Byzantium at the end of the Crescentine revolt, reappeared 
in Rome and, supported by a faction of malcontents, seized John 

XIV. The unfortunate Pope was thrown into a dungeon in 
St. Angelo, and having failed to die, he was strangled after four 
months' captivity. Boniface VII. was, however, overthrown him- 
self in the following year by the Crescentii, who conducted 
a counter-revolution in the name of the national party. It is 
difficult to follow the sequence of events, but the Crescentii 
cannot have been uniformly successful at first, for in 985 John 

XV. succeeded to the Papacy, and is described as hostile to 
Crescentius and favourable to the German party. Things 
must have moved rapidly, however, for in the same year, Cres- 
centius succeeded in making himself Patricius of Rome, and in 
his own person tried to restore the dictatorship of Alberic. But 
he lacked either the self-confidence or the audacity of his greater 
prototype, for his attitude towards Theophano, when she came 
in the name of Otto III. to Rome in 989, was as deferential and 
subservient as Imperial arrogance could demand. On the other 
hand, his actual position in Rome was little short of sovereignty. 
The envoys of Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty 
in France, complained that it was impossible to get even a 
hearing from the Pope unless one brought presents for the 
" tyrant " Crescentius. 

The position of John XV. finally became untenable. He 
fled from Rome to Count Hugo of Tuscany — a strong Imperialist, 
who forthwith summoned the boy Otto. With the spirit of a 
Caesar and the temperament of a saint, the figure of Otto III. is 
one of the most pathetic which European history presents. 
Belonging, as it has been said, to the realm of poetry rather than 
of history, he seemed destined by nature and by circumstance 
to failure and disillusionment. His heart beat high in 
anticipation as he set out in 996 to visit the city of his dreams. 
He was going to rescue the Church — to restore the Empire ; he 
was Caesar — he was Constantine ; he was going to rebuild the 
walls of Jerusalem. And he was fifteen years old. 

Crescentius proved himself all that was compliant, and no 
hint of aristocratic opposition mars the epic character which 



THE BEGINNINGS OF EEFOKM 97 

Otto was so anxious to maintain on this momentous occasion. 
Before the Imperial coronation had taken place, and as if to give 
the young Emperor full scope to inaugurate a new era, John XV. 
died. With Otto was his cousin Bruno, his kindred spirit and 
chosen companion, who shared his dreams and understood his 
ideals. The boy-Emperor saw no drawback in the appointment 
of a pious and courageous youth to be his coadjutor in the 
reformation of Christendom, and if he had lived long enough, 
Gregory V. would almost certainly have justified his confidence. 

To Gregory, imbued with Cluniac traditions, and afire with 
young intolerance, the condition of the Papacy as he found it 
was a matter for tears. It was not without justification that 
Arnulf of Orleans had dissuaded the synod of Rheims from 
appealing in 995 to Rome. His recapitulation of papal history 
was a substantial apology for tenth century " Protestantism " : 
"O unfortunate Rome, in the silence of the past thou gavest our 
ancestors the light of the Fathers of the Church. Our times, 
however, thou hast darkened with a night so terrible as shall 
make them notorious even in the future. Once thou gavest us 
the renowned Leos, the great Gregories . . . What have we not 
witnessed in these days? We have seen John, surnamed 
Octavian, wallowing in the mire of sensuality, and even conspiring 
against Otto whom he himself had crowned. . . . Emperor Otto 
was succeeded by Emperor Otto, who excelled all princes in 
arms, in wisdom, and in knowledge. A dreadful monster, how- 
ever, dripping with the blood of his predecessor, filled the chair 
of Peter : Boniface, a man who in criminality surpassed the rest 
of mankind." The invective concludes with the condemnation 
of the unworthy Pope as ** an idol in God's Temple, from whom 
we may as well expect oracles as from a block of stone ". 

To the challenge of the Gallican Bishop, the Synod of 
St. Peter's, summoned by the two boy-leaders of Europe after 
Otto's coronation, was in some measure an answer. Before 
dealing with general abuses, political order was restored by the 
trial of Crescentius. The rebel noble was first banished, and 
then pardoned, by an indiscreet act of royal clemency. The result 
was that as soon as Otto had left the city, the rebellion broke 
out again with renewed vigour, and Crescentius had merely re- 
gathered his forces in the interval of peace. Gregory V. escaped 
to Pavia, where his calm and dignified behaviour set an example 
which other Popes in parallel dilemmas would have done well to 
follow. He wasted no words in useless recrimination, but 
contented himself with simply excommunicating Crescentius, 
and instead of giving way to hysterical panic, he transacted his 

7 



98 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

official business, received envoys, and arbitrated in European 
politics as he would have done in his Roman palace. 

Meanwhile, Crescentius had not failed to find a suitable 
opponent for the German Pope in Philagathus, an unscrupulous 
diplomat, who had been employed by Otto in an important 
embassy to Constantinople. On his return from the East, 
Philagathus sold himself to Crescentius, and regardless of the 
bonds of gratitude and political faith, used his newly-acquired 
influence with the eastern Emperor against his late patron. The 
career of Philagathus as anti-pope was, however, cut short by an 
expedition of Otto, accompanied by Gregory, in 997. The ferocity 
which the young Emperor displayed in suppressing the revolt, 
and the uncharacteristic barbarity of his treatment of Phila- 
gathus, seem to indicate the first effects of disillusionment on 
his character. The anti-pope was captured in an attempt to 
escape ; he was mutilated, condemned by a synod, degraded, and 
processed through Rome seated backwards on an ass ; finally, he 
was thrown into a dungeon, whence he was never heard of again. 
It remained to subdue Crescentius, who was holding out against 
overwhelming numbers in St. Angelo. After a heroic resistance, 
the German battering-rams finally forced him to capitulate. He 
was beheaded on the battlements, and his body was afterwards 
exposed on Monte Mario. His tragic end, and the fiction that 
his career was a vindication of national liberties, have entitled 
Crescentius to a place among the heroes of modern Italy. In 
reality, however, his rebellion was merely one of the long series 
of risings of the civic aristocracy which take the place in papal 
history of the feudal revolts of England, France, or Germany. 

Otto's tender conscience soon convicted him for his ruthless 
treatment of the Roman rebels, and remorse threw him back on 
the mystic side of his nature, which was always at war with his 
Caesarean ambitions. He spent the year 998 on a pilgrimage to 
the chief shrines of Italy, and held intercourse with St. Nilus, 
the hermit of the south, placing his Imperial crown in the hands 
of the saint in a characteristic moment of spiritual enthusiasm. 
Otto's devotional exercises were suddenly cut short by the news 
of the death of Gregory V. The first of the German Popes, 
whose names stand for the regeneration of the Papacy — in fact, 
the first non-Roman Pope for 250 years — the royal youth, who 
had inaugurated the era of reform, was cut off at the moment 
when the time was ripe for action. 

In the place of his cousin, Otto gave the Romans his tutor 
Gerbert, a Frenchman, a scientific genius and a man of ex- 
perience, who took the significant title of Silvester II. His 



THE BEGINNINGS OF KEFOEM 99 

intimate knowledge of his Imperial pupil gave him an over- 
whelming advantage in all relations between himself and Otto, 
and made his pontificate an epoch in papal-imperial history. 
He stimulated the young Emperor's all-too-vivid imagination, 
encouraged his visionary flights, and played down to his boyish 
vanity. Under his influence, the glamour of unreality fogged 
the imperial ideals of Otto : the yearning after Hellenic Orien- 
talism, inculcated from babyhood by his Greek mother, now 
dominated the other elements of his complex but plastic nature. 
It was under Silvester's guidance that Otto's "Book of For- 
mularies " was drawn up, which introduced to the Roman court 
the elaborate ceremonial of Byzantium. In the place of the 
vigorous Teutonic simplicity of Otto the Great, his grandson 
surrounded himself with the ridiculous ostentation of Eastern 
etiquette. Meanwhile, the Pope held the vision of Constantine 
ever before the eyes of his pupil. The Donation of Otto III., 
though it denies the claim of the Church to temporal power as 
a matter of historic right, is lavish in its actual generosity. 
Silvester was opportunist enough to accept the gift without 
pressing the point as to the nature of the claim. He received 
the eight Romagnol counties which Otto bestowed on him, and 
flatteringly persuaded the Emperor to stay in Rome. 

New allegiance to the Church came from the surprising 
direction of Hungary. The King Stephen sent envoys to Rome, 
asking for investiture from Sylvester in return for spiritual 
obedience. Otto associated himself with Silvester in acquies- 
cence, hoping to receive the newly-converted country as a new 
fief of the Empire. Stephen, however, ignored the Emperor's 
interference, and thereafter recognised the ecclesiastical bond 
alone. 

In spite of Silvester's entreaties, Otto left Italy in 999, being 
recalled to Germany by the usual double motive of political 
necessity and spiritual attraction. The death of the capable 
regent, his aunt Matilda, necessitated his re-visiting the real 
centre of his dominions, and the summons was enhanced by a 
vow to visit the grave of his chosen patron, St. Adalbert. The 
apprehension of Silvester was too well founded. The dreaded 
year 1000 was at hand, and the panic-stricken anticipation of 
the day of Doom produced a general political hysteria. While 
Otto knelt in mystical rapture before the cave at Aachen, where 
Charles the Great was buried, taking from the neck of the 
greater dreamer a gold chain as an insignia of empire, Rome — 
the desire both of the dead hero and of the living boy — had 
once more raised the cry of " No interference ". 



100 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Otto hurried back to Rome early in 1000, supported by a 
German army, and the city subsided at his approach. He once 
more took up his abode in the Palace on the Aventine over- 
looking the monastery dedicated to St. Adalbert of Prague. The 
murmur of unrest was lulled, but it had not vanished. The 
civic jealousy of Rome for the little town of Tivoli was aroused 
by the clemency of Otto, who at the solicitation of Sylvester, 
showed mercy in suppressing a revolt on the part of the towns- 
folk against the Dux. The municipal rivalry between the world- 
capital and the little Campagnol town was the pretext for a 
revolution in Rome. Otto's palace was besieged by an infuriated 
mob, and the young Emperor, with an eloquence born of bitter- 
ness of soul, addressed the rebels from a tower. " Are you," he 
cried, "my Romans, for whose sake I have left my country and 
my relations ? Out of love for you I have shed the blood of my 
Saxons and of all Germans, yea even mine own . . . You were 
my favourite children ; for you I have incurred the ill-will of all 
the rest. And in reward you desert your father. You have 
cruelly slaughtered my trusted friends, you have shut me 
myself out from among you ; though this you could not wholly 
do, since I cannot banish from my heart those whom I have 
cherished with a father's love." (Recorded by Tanymar, who 
heard it.) The sincerity of Otto's disillusion touched the fickle 
hearts of his hearers, and the leaders of the revolt were thrown 
half-dead at his feet. But the young Emperor never recovered 
his confidence : he fled to St. Romuald, the Lombard hermit, for 
consolation, and for some time tried to forget the overthrow of 
his ambition in the cultivation of his soul. But Otto was too 
restless for a monk. Rome attracted him, fatally and irresistibly, 
to the last. With feverish energy he harried the Campagna, 
beset by enemies on every side, and finally died in the arms of 
Silvester II. in a castle outside the city. At the age of 21 he 
died — the supreme example of royal self-sacrifice of which the 
history of Italy affords so many instances. "The magic of the 
name of Rome " was never responsible for a more pitiable 
tragedy. 

Otto's ideals died with him. The old Pope only outlived him 
for a year, and died with the sound of failure ringing in his ears. 
The last of the national kings, Arduin of Ivrea, was crowned at 
Pavia, and Rome fell into the hands of John Crescentius, the 
third Patricius of the illustrious line of rebels. For the next six 
years (1003-9) John Crescentius held absolute sway in Rome 
and set up two puppet Popes, John XVII. and John XVIII. , who 
leave no record of personality behind them. The final overthrow 



THE BEGINNINGS OF KEEOBM 101 

of the Crescentines was effected by a third would-be tyrant 
House, that of the Counts of Tusculum. They traced their 
descent to the Theophylacts, whose example they tried to 
emulate. In 1009, a member of their House succeeded to the 
Papacy as Sergius IV. and during his three years' pontificate 
John Crescentius noticeably lost ground. The chroniclers give 
no details, and the records are defective, but it seems that on 
the death of John Crescentius and Sergius IV. Theophylact of 
Tusculum seized the Papacy by force from Gregory, the Crescen- 
tine candidate. The Tusculans had been careful to preserve an 
ostentatious show of loyalty to Henry II. who had succeeded 
his cousin, Otto III., in Germany. Hence, when the two 
Popes appealed to Henry to arbitrate, he naturally rejected 
Gregory, and pledged himself to recognise the Tusculan Benedict 
VIII. The rule of the new Pope, though it was founded on no 
very exalted moral conception of Popedom, was vigorous and 
effective. He made his brother Romanus Senator of the city, 
and together with him restored a measure of firm government, 
which Rome had not known for many a generation. His first 
object was to restore the Papacy to the level of an Italian power, 
and with this object in view he immediately turned his atten- 
tion to South Italy and the Saracens. 

Hitherto the Popes had drawn their allies entirely from the 
fickle south, and their inability to gain more than a temporary 
advantage over the elusive and ubiquitous Mohammedan was 
largely due to the uncertain loyalty of their southern adherents. 
Benedict VIII. inaugurated a new era in the Saracen war by 
calling on the northern seaports to contribute their share to 
the defence of Italy and the Church. With a fleet drawn 
from Pisa and Genoa, who thus for the first time make their 
appearance in the history of the Church, the Papal forces 
gained a complete and decisive maritime victory over the con- 
quering chief Mogehid. 

Meanwhile, the Greeks were renewing their attempt to win 
back the Byzantine provinces, and, against their onset, Benedict 
had recourse to another innovation, which was fraught with 
consequences for the future of Italy. As early as 1010, Dattus 
and Melus of Bari had employed the services of a pilgrim- 
contingent of Norman knights to assist them in an attempt to 
throw off the Byzantine yoke — an attempt which ended dis- 
astrously in the defeat of Cannae. They were the fore-runners 
of a more deliberate migration. The survivors of Cannae sold 
their swords to the highest bidder, and vacillated between the 
opposing forces with the sans-gene of the true mercenary. 



102 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

When, in 1022, Henry II. yielded to the Pope's appeal and 
came in person to South Italy, the fiercest resistance which he 
had to encounter came from the new Greek fortress of Troja, 
which was held against him by a strong Norman contingent 
under the command of the Greek Catapan. 

While Henry was at work in the south regaining his hold 
on Byzantine-Lombard provinces, Benedict began to turn his 
attention to reform. His efforts to enforce celibacy and put 
down simony were actuated by political motives rather than 
spiritual zeal. But they were none the less laudable, and it 
was a pity that they came too late on his political programme 
for him to bring them to a successful issue. 

Benedict VIII. was succeeded in 1024 by his brother, 
Rom anus, who had for the last ten years controlled the civil 
government of the city as Senator. The second House of 
Theophylact, like their forerunners and ancestors, brought about 
their downfall by an attempt to identify too closely the co- 
ordinate spheres of the Patriciate and the Papacy. The Senator 
Romanus was not a success as Pope John XIX. He knew 
nothing about theology, and he shocked the cardinals by his 
ignorance of papal history. He was genuinely surprised at the 
consternation which was aroused when he nearly yielded the 
title of Universal Bishop to the Patriarch of Alexandria. Nor 
was he more effective on his greatest state occasion, the coro- 
nation of the new Emperor Conrad II. in 1027. Rome was by 
now accustomed to the idea of riot and disorder in connection 
with Imperial coronation, and the Romans looked forward to 
the street fight which invariably followed as they would to a 
carnival. But seldom was the scene more blood-stained, or, 
one would have thought, less impressive than it was under the 
auspices of John XIX. A petty quarrel for precedence between 
the Bishops of Milan and Ravenna added the strife of factions 
to that of parties, and gave a touch of the ridiculous to the 
familiar accompaniments of the scene. The presence of two 
foreign kings was no check on the unbridled passions of the 
Romans, and we can but wonder at the simple piety of King 
Canute, who, in half- barbaric wonder, found enough inspiration 
in the scene to stir him to make resolutions for future good 
government. 

On the death of John XIX. in 1033 his relations committed 
the crowning act of indiscretion which brought about the final 
overthrow of the House of Tusculum. They raised his nephew, 
the child Theophylact, to the Papal throne as Benedict IX. 
Undeterred by the precedent of John XII., they placed the 



THE BEGINNINGS OF KEEOEM 103 

delicate weapons of tyranny in the hands of a boy too young 
to wield them. His elder brother, Gregory, siezed the Patrician 
power as Senator of Rome, but he could not protect Benedict 
from the consequences of his youth. The Romans would 
tolerate a good deal in the successor of St. Peter, but a child- 
apostle struck them as unnatural and preposterous. A con- 
spiracy of the captains in 1035 nearly cost the boy his life, 
but the panic created by an eclipse of the sun enabled him to 
escape to Conrad for protection. The Emperor was at Cremona, 
engaged in suppressing a revolt of the Lombard "vavasours," 
or small landowners. But he needed the Pope's co-operation 
against Heribert, the rebel Archbishop of Milan ; he, therefore, 
restored Benedict to Rome, and in return bade him excom- 
municate Heribert. 

Supported by his brothers, Benedict instituted a reign of 
terror in Rome. The Lateran became the scene of wild orgies 
and extravagant follies. No story told of the Tusculan brothers 
was too execrable or too fantastically criminal to gain credence 
in Rome. The city seems to have been infested by a moral 
epidemic, but the records are too slight to enlighten us as to its 
history. Benedict himself seems to have put an end to his 
pontifical career by falling in love with his cousin, whose father, 
Girardo de Saxo, required his would-be son-in-law to resign 
the Papacy as the condition of marriage with his daughter. 
Girardo had been bribed by the Roman candidate for the Papal 
throne, who instantly assumed the tiara as Sylvester III. But 
Girardo broke faith with his nephew, and Benedict IX., thwarted 
in his amorous bargain, resumed his office. But at last, finding 
himself powerless against the tide of hatred which his vices had 
accumulated, he sold the Papacy to a third candidate, John 
Gratianus, who consented to make over to Benedict the annual 
revenue, known as Peter's Pence, derived from England. 

Thus, in 1045, there were said to be three Popes in Rome, 
who had all of them seized the Holy Office by force, two of 
whom were morally unfit to be priests. The third, who 
took the title of Gregory VI., was a man of different calibre. 
He was a person of blameless reputation, who had bought the 
Papacy in order to deliver it out of unworthy hands. He was 
an enthusiast for reform, and his elevation was received with 
acclamation at Cluny. He was hailed with delight by the 
famous ascetic, St. Peter Damiani, who rejoiced that "the Dove 
had returned to the Ark ". Moreover, there stood at his side one 
whose name stands first among the great makers of the Papacy, 
and it is impossible to doubt the moral worthiness of the Pope 



104 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

from whom Hildebrand, in affectionate gratitude, took his title. 
But Gregory VI. could not get rid of the consequences of the 
past : his reprobate predecessors clogged his path, and his over- 
sensitive conscience smote him for the bold stroke of simony by 
which he had attained his position. 

In 1046, the German King, Henry III., came to Italy, with 
the intention of putting an end to the disorders of Rome. At 
the Council of Sutri, the three Popes were one and all set aside. 
Sylvester III. was summarily deposed, and confined to a monas- 
tery. Gregory VI. confessed himself guilty of simony, and with 
quiet dignity surrendered to the Council. His short career was 
misunderstood by the majority of his contemporaries, who were 
uncertain whether to regard him as an apostate or a fool. It 
required the genius of a Hildebrand to do justice to his bold 
anachronism. 

From Sutri, Henry pressed on to Rome, where the formal 
deposition of the three Popes was read in St. Peters. Benedict 
IX. still held out in the fortress of Tusculum, but Rome had done 
with Tusculan tyranny, and recognised in Henry III. a deliverer 
worthy of their unanimous allegiance. The general enthusiasm 
of his reception was enhanced by his verbal recognition of the 
electoral rights of Rome, when Henry bade the Romans choose 
their own Pope. The Senators gracefully yielded the right to 
the King, who indeed found the task of election no light one. It 
was difficult to find anyone worthy or willing to accept the re- 
sponsibility. Finally, Sindger of Bamberg reluctantly accepted, 
and took the title of Clement II. 

The coronation of Henry III., which followed immediately on 
the election of the new Pope, ushers in the new epoch, which is 
perhaps the most momentous in the whole of papal history. 
New principles and new ideas were about to come to birth, on 
which was to be founded the new Papacy. Under the Counts of 
Tusculum the Papacy had sunk to its lowest level : under 
Hildebrand it was to reach the pinnacle of power. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE PAPACY UNDER HILDEBRAND, a.d. 1046-1085 

Part I. Hildebrand 

IN the period which is opened by the Council of Sutri, the 
principles upon which reform depended were self-evident, 
but the remoter issues which were bound up with it were 
hardly grasped at all. It was well to realise the abuses of 
simony and to wage war against clerical immorality ; but the 
root of the evil still remained untouched as long as the Church 
was ready to submit to the tutelage of secular authority. As 
long as papal elections required Imperial confirmation, the course 
of reform lay at the discretion of the Emperor, while spiritual 
appointments remained in the hands of the lay baronage, where 
was the guarantee for a worthy priesthood ? This was an aspect 
of the question which only time could reveal ; one man alone 
apprehended it at the time of the Council of Sutri, and he — the 
monk Hildebrand — left Rome on the election of Clement II. 

Honour is due to the Emperor Henry III. for his lofty con- 
ception of the papal office, and for his statesmanlike zeal in the 
cause of its restoration as a moral force. Honour, too, must be 
ascribed to the reforming Popes who prepared the work of 
Hildebrand by recalling the ideal of Gregory I. If they were 
too ready in the pursuit of peace to cast away the sword, too 
intent upon inward restitution to turn their attention to emanci- 
pation from outward control, the mistake was an easy one to 
make. With such an emperor as Henry III. to deal with, it was 
hardly remarkable that the reforming Popes should accept his 
intervention in a submissive spirit. Indeed, the attitude of 
Hildebrand, who remained unsympathetic and critical in his 
retreat at Cluny, must have looked like sullen pessimism rather 
than political foresight. 

Clement II. only lived for a few months as Pope, and his 
sudden death in 1047 gave rise to the suspicion that he had been 
poisoned. The party of Benedict IX. had still to be reckoned 
with ; the ex-Pope returned to Rome on the death of Clement, 
and supported by Boniface of Tuscany — the chief Imperial 
vassal of Italy — he became the centre of an anti-imperial revolt. 

105 



106 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 






But the alertness of Henry put an end to Benedict's prospects. 
He issued his challenge before his opponents were ready to take 
it up. He sent Poppo, Bishop of Brixen, to Boniface, and bade 
the Margrave escort him as Pope-designate to Rome. Boniface 
had no choice but reluctantly to comply, and abandoning Bene- 
dict, he stood by at the consecration of Poppo as Damasus II. 
Hardly had the new Pope effected the final expulsion of 
Benedict from Rome, when he himself met with a sudden death, 
which added to the sinister impressions created by recent papal 
history. 

To find a successor was harder than ever. Eventually Bruno 
of Toul, by an impulse little short of heroic, consented to risk 
his life in the service of St. Peter, and in 1049 assumed the title 
of Leo IX. He took pains to disguise the fact that he came as 
a stranger imposed on Rome by a foreign power, and no hint of 
G3rman pride showed through his outward deference to the 
Roman people. Accompanied by Hildebrand, who had probably 
indicated the attitude which he adopted, Bruno approached the 
city bare-foot, and as a pilgrim craved permission to enter. He 
had previously stipulated to Henry that his acceptance of the 
papal office should be conditional on the unanimous election of 
the Roman synod. His vindication of the electoral rights of 
Rome went a long way towards establishing his popularity in 
the city, and gave him at the outset an advantage which other 
German popes had not been wise enough to secure. But the 
Papacy to which as Leo IX. he succeeded was the mere shadow 
of its former self. Its temporal resources had been squandered 
by the Tusculans to the point of destitution ; and the new Pope 
even contemplated the prospect of selling his wardrobe as a 
means of paying his way. The Romans, once earning their 
bread in the prosperous service of the Lateran court, now lived 
precariously on the occasional alms of rich pilgrims, who, like 
Macbeth of Scotland in 1050, were moved to generosity by their 
pitiful condition. As with material wealth, so with the spiritual 
heritage of the new Pope. Half a century of bondage to an ex- 
tortionate and self-seeking nobility had obliterated the work of 
the Ottos, and effaced the memory of Gregory V. and Sylvester 
II. Peter Damianf s indictment of ecclesiastical morals, con- 
tained in his " Gomorrhianus," was condemned, not for 
exaggeration, but for its uncompromising revelation of the de- 
plorable truth. 

Leo adopted the wisest course open to him under the circum- 
stances. He remained but a little while in Rome, where he was 
confronted with distress which he was powerless to relieve. In 



THE PAPACY UNDEE HILDEBEAND 107 

company with Hildebrand he travelled about in Italy and in 
Europe, restoring his dominions at home and his authority 
abroad. In 1051, he made an expedition to South Italy, where 
he was adopted by the duchy of Benevento as its sovereign in 
place of the Lombard Pandulf. The value of the acquisition 
was, however, impaired by the Normans, who harried it under 
William of the Long Arm from their stronghold in Apulia. To 
ward off the hostility of the Normans, Leo collected an army of 
German mercenaries, and the two forces met in pitched battle 
at Civitate in 1053. The Pope, who headed the campaign in 
person, was completely defeated, but the Normans chivalrously 
received him into their midst, and besought his forgiveness for 
having taken up arms against him. Their generosity deserved 
a better return than it met with at the hands of Leo, who had 
no sooner pronounced the absolution which his enemies craved 
than he conspired against them with their persistent antagonist, 
the Eastern Emperor. 

Apart from his military failure in the South, Leo got much 
discredited for the Norman campaign, and its disasters were 
interpreted as the judgment of God, "since it befits the priest 
only to make war with the weapons of the spirit, and not to draw 
the iron sword in temporal matters" (Herman Contractus). 
Peter Damiani, Leo's personal friend, did not scruple to take 
him to task in a bold letter of remonstrance, in which he 
appeals to the example of Gregory in his dealings with the 
Lombards, contrasting it with that of Leo to the latter's disad- 
vantage. With a fine disregard of the interests of temporal 
power, the saint asks — " Why should armed hosts bluster with 
the sword for temporal and transitory possessions of the Church ? 
Why should Christians murder Christians on account of the 
loss of wretched property?" The glamour of Peter Damiani's 
idealism should not blind us to the real issues upon which papal 
policy depended. The development of the Papacy on spiritual 
lines seemed to lie within the boundary of a charmed circle. 
Temporal power was its antithesis, but it was also indispensable 
as a political expression of the spiritual conception. Such an 
expression was absolutely necessary in an age which invariably 
sought to visualise its ideals, and to express its abstract beliefs 
in terms of the concrete and the tangible. Again and again the 
conscience of mediaeval Christendom is outraged by the sight of 
a Pope leading his forces against a political antagonist, without 
a suspicion of the logical inconsistency which underlay these 
scruples. 

More effective than his diplomacy in South Italy were Leo's 



108 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE;PAPACY 

wanderings in Europe. In Germany, he supported the Emperor 
by excommunicating the rebel, Godfrey of Lotharingia, who was 
brought to the feet of the Pope and the Emperor at Aachen. 
From Aachen he went to Rheims, where he attended an impor- 
tant Council, and asserted his prerogative by issuing decrees and 
commands without reference to the French King, who had ab- 
sented himself from the Council, owing to his jealousy of papal 
control. A Synod at Mainz followed the Council of Rheims, and 
Leo took the opportunity of making a general survey of ecclesi- 
astical affairs in Germany before returning to Rome in 1050. 
The value of Leo's European tour was incalculable to his young 
travelling companion, Hildebrand, whose alert intelligence was 
quick to receive impressions, and retentive in storing them up 
for the future. 

In 1054, Leo IX. died, and was succeeded by Victor II., 
another nominee of the German Emperor. The reason why 
Hildebrand was not elected has been the subject of discussion, 
but there were many motives which may have pointed to the 
postponement. Most probably he already foresaw the dimensions 
of the struggle by which he would be obliged to accomplish his 
end, and the character and might of Henry III. made him an 
unsuitable antagonist. Moreover, the condition of Rome was 
unfavourable : the general distress caused the populace as usual 
to turn against the Popes, and without the loyalty of the city it 
would be hopeless to embark on the great life-and-death contest 
which the genius of Hildebrand had already sighted. 

So, for nearly twenty years longer, Hildebrand remained the 
power behind the throne, and unostentatiously secured the pre- 
liminary steps which paved the way for his ultimate triumph. 
In the same year as the coronation of Victor, Henry III. made 
an expedition to Italy with the object of reasserting his hold on 
the Tuscan province, which had fallen into the possession of his 
turbulent vassal, Godfrey of Lotharingia, through his marriage 
with Beatrice, the widow of the late Margrave. Two years later 
Henry III. died, bequeathing his crown to his six-year-old son, 
Henry IV., whom he commended to the care of the Pope. Pope 
Victor was present at the death of the great Emperor, and es- 
corted his child-heir to Aachen, where he crowned him. 

The minority of Henry IV., so disastrous from the Imperial 
standpoint, was the opportunity of the Papacy. To add to the 
advantage, the Empress, who was nominally regent, was a weak 
woman, and the education of the boy-king was neglected. Im- 
perial politics lay at the discretion of the Pope and the chief 
Imperial vassal, Godfrey of Tuscany, whose interests were 



THE PAPACY UNDEE HILDEBEAND 109 

from the first co-ordinate. Accordingly, when, in 1057 the death 
of Victor caused a new election, Stephen IX., the brother of 
Duke Godfrey, was elected by those who were on the spot, and 
his appointment was confirmed in the name of the Emperor. 
Hildebrand, though absent at the time, fully approved of the 
appointment. Stephen was a man after his own heart — an ardent 
reformer, a staunch advocate of the doctrine of papal freedom, and 
a fearless pioneer of new principles. Unfortunately, his pontifi- 
cate only lasted for a year, and his death, in 1058, caused a violent 
outbreak of hostility in Rome on the part of the noble factions. 
The Crescentine and the Tusculan parties waived their tradi- 
tional antagonism, and combined to elect the Bishop of Velletri, 
as anti-pope, Benedict X. Hildebrand, who was still absent 
from Rome, heard of it with consternation, and managed, for the 
moment, to patch up an alliance between the Empress Agnes 
and Godfrey of Tuscany, who consented to lay aside their 
mutual grievances and use their joint-authority in the support 
of Hildebrand's candidate, Nicholas II. But the event had 
proved to Hildebrand that the time was passed for the real issue 
to be submerged, and the famous Decree of Election of the year 
1059 marks the beginning of a new phase, in which the Papacy 
sought no longer to disguise the rivalry underlying its dealings 
with the Empire. The schism which followed the death of 
Stephen IX. exposed the utter weakness of the papal position, 
owing to the anomalous condition of the principle of election, 
and Hildebrand resolved that such an opportunity should not 
occur again. The Decree of 1059 raised the Cardinal Bishops to 
the status of senators for the purpose of electing the Pope. The 
old indefinite electoral body — the " Clerus, Ordo. populusque" 
of Rome — were disfranchised, and the right of the Emperor to 
confirm the choice of the Cardinals was preserved in a vague 
clause, "saving due honour and reverence to Henry, at this 
present time king . . . even as we have granted this right to 
him and his successors, as many as shall personally obtain it 
from the Apostolic See ". The Synod, which passed the decree, 
was the largest which had ever met in the Lateran, but the 
priests who composed it were almost exclusively Italian. It 
was a national as well as a hierarchical revolution, in which 
every element of anti- German feeling had its share, and, for the 
moment, owing to the internal politics of Germany, it was suf- 
fered to pass unchallenged. 

There can be no reasonable doubt that the Decree of Election 
was largely, if not entirely, the work of Hildebrand, and that 
with its passing the Hildebrandine Papacy came into existence. 



110 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

But the legal foundation thus laid under Nicholas II. called for 
new security for political defence. The Decree of Election was 
followed up by the Norman Alliance, and at Melfi the Pope re- 
ceived the homage of Richard of Aversa and Robert Guiscard, 
the two most prominent leaders in Italy of the foremost 
military nation of Europe. 

On the death of Nicholas II. in 1061 the opposition to the 
New Papacy broke out, and made itself generally felt throughout 
Italy in three years' civil war, which was the prelude to a greater 
struggle still to come. In this earlier contest, the antagonism 
raged round the German Crown rather than, as later, against it. 
In Germany, the Empress-regent was a cipher, and the boy 
Henry was under the tutelage of Archbishop Hanno, who had 
seized the Government by violence and kidnapped the King. 
Hanno was inclined to favour Hildebrand and his nominee, 
Alexander II. , as against the opposition party of the Italian 
nobility and the anti-pope Cadalus. But the condition of Ger- 
many gave Hildebrand no assurance for depending on it as an 
ally. Against Hanno was arrayed the might of the German 
Counts, who were hostile both to his government and to his 
principles. On the one hand, they disputed the Archbishop's 
despotism, and, on the other, they disliked his association with 
the champion of reform, for the former implied hostility to 
feudal privileges, while the latter threatened the system of lay 
patronage which was the bulwark of their caste. 

In Italy the distribution of parties was fairly even, and at 
first Pope and anti-pope seemed to have equal chances of 
success. To counter-balance the German Counts, who ranged 
themselves on the side of Cadalus, Alexander relied for military 
support on the swords of the Normans, whose allegiance was as 
yet untried in the service of the Papacy. The leaders were 
drawn from the hierarchy by Alexander, and from the Roman 
nobility by his rival. Each side had its champions in the field 
of dialectic. The caustic eloquence of the worldling Bishop 
Benzo won for Cadalus many of his most signal triumphs, while 
the sonorous diatribes of Peter Damiani placed all the force of 
ascetic denunciation at the disposal of Alexander II. While 
the military struggle raged in Rome with a seriousness of pur- 
pose which recalled the contest of Caesar and Pompey, Benzo 
and Damiani hurled invectives across the literary arena. From 
the Lateran, which Alexander II. made his headquarters, the 
saint addresses the anti-pope as "the arrow from the bow of 
Satan, the rod of Asher, the shipwreck of chastity, the scum of 
the century, the food of Hell ". More effective are the satirical 



THE PAPACY UNDEE HILDEBEAND 111 

replies of the conceited Bishop of Alba, who compares himself 
to Cicero, and complains that "Asinander (i.e. Alexander) fills 
the world with nettles and vipers ". More than once Alexander 
was worsted by Benzo in the warfare of words, where the inferior 
abilities of Cadalus had failed to gain a political advantage. 

The connecting link between Germany and Italy was Milan. 
The Lombard city had long been a centre of political and 
religious turbulence. It was originally the stronghold of re- 
action as opposed to reform, and all the papal denunciations of 
clerical marriage had failed to shake the autocracy of the 
secularised clergy who dominated the city. Latterly, however, 
a democratic reform party had arisen, which, in the name of 
progress, had created riots, and attacked the married clergy in 
the streets. Hildebrand was, of course, in sympathy with the 
party of the Patarines, as the progressivists were called, and, 
under his auspices, Peter Damiani was sent to restore order. 
The hierarchy of Milan, who took refuge behind the privileges 
which they claimed as granted to them by St. Ambrose, heard of 
Peter's approach with the deepest concern. Nor were their fears 
unfounded. The " order" which the saint restored was one- 
sided : the old abuses were rigorously stamped out, and the 
Ambrosian privileges were mercilessly swept aside. For a time 
at least the Patarines remained in possession. But the contest 
between Alexander and Cadalus reopened the breach. The 
Ambrosian party flocked to the standard of Cadalus, while the 
Patarines took up the cause of Alexander. 

Meanwhile, Cadalus had managed to conquer the Leonina, 
but he fell back before the forces of Godfrey of Tuscany, who 
had undertaken to arbitrate between the two parties by forcing 
both to submit to the decision of the German Government. 
This was in 1062, and Henry was in the hands of Hanno of 
Cologne. Hanno had once been the leader of the Patarines, so 
that his sympathies were predisposed in favour of Alexander. 
Hence the German decision was given in favour of the reform 
party, which resulted in the return of Alexander to Rome, 
whence both he and his rival had been banished by the decree 
of Godfrey. But a revolution in Germany, which overthrew 
Hanno and restored the Empress to power, reflected itself in 
Italy to the discomfiture of the Pope in the renewal of the civil 
war. The next year was occupied by both parties in fruitless 
embassies to Henry, who was powerless in the hands of the 
ecclesiastical factions ; in futile recriminations on the part of 
Damiani, and wasted grandiloquence from the pen of Benzo. 
Finally, the restoration of Hanno to power in Germany brought 



112 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

a decisive victory for Alexander, which was confirmed by the 
Council of Mantua in 1064. Supported by Godfrey of Tuscany 
and the Norman knights, the New Papacy was secured in its 
triumph. Alexander and Cadalus had not fought out their duel 
in vain, but it was with the strategists rather than the com- 
batants that the real issues lay. To the paramount influence of 
Hildebrand throughout the contest, the testimony of his grudg- 
ing admirer, Peter Damiani, bears witness. " I respect the 
Pope," he writes, "but I prostrate myself in adoration before 
you. You make him Lord, but he makes you God." The 
impress of Hildebrand's personality was never more forcibly 
felt than by the friend who had never liked him. The two men, 
akin in nothing but their aims, seemed bound together by a 
bond which their divergence of temperament, verging on the 
point of antipathy, failed to break. The magnetic attraction of 
genius alone can account for the unswerving loyalty and the 
unwilling deference which the independent and masterful 
ascetic invariably rendered to his "Holy Satan" — to use his 
own epithet for Hildebrand. 

The peace which had descended on the Papacy was once 
more disturbed in 1066 by Richard of Capua, the captain 
of the Norman forces, who seems to have considered the 
remuneration for his services to the Papacy inadequate. He 
marched against Rome, demanding the title of Patricius, and 
threatening to extort it by force. But Richard had miscalculated 
the extent of the Pope's dependence on him. Alexander appealed 
to his more powerful friend Godfrey of Tuscany, who came with 
his forces to Rome and reduced the Norman Duke to a proper 
sense of the relation of vassalage. 

With Godfrey came his step-daughter Matilda, the future 
Duchess of Tuscany, who was destined to have so large an 
influence on the fortunes of Hildebrand. Even in her girlhood 
Matilda showed signs of an individuality more strongly marked 
than is characteristic of the women of her period. She was 
courageous, proud, and indomitable, and her susceptibility to 
Hildebrand's influence was based on all that was strongest in her 
nature. She was impressionable without losing her independence 
of judgment : she grasped the full meaning of the Hildebrandine 
ideal, saw without flinching the goal to which it led, and laboured 
steadily for its fulfilment. The friendship between Matilda and 
Hildebrand which began at this time was sealed by experience 
till it became one of the most momentous and honourable of 
such relationships which history has ever recorded. Without 
the reliable support of the great Duchess, as she afterwards 



THE PAPACY UNDEE HILDEBEAND 113 

became, the greatest drama of papal history could never have 
been played. 

In the same year, the character of the young German King 
began to make itself felt in his relationship to the Pope. 
Henry IV. will always remain something of an enigma to history. 
His impulsiveness, his general ineffectiveness, intermingled with 
occasional spurts of energy — his power of recovering from 
disaster which gives the lie to the contemporary belief in his 
incompetence, form a picture of which it is hard to grasp the 
main outline. In 1066 he was married to the beautiful and 
deserving Bertha of Turin. But he took a capricious dislike to 
his bride and threatened to divorce her, and with this end in 
view he intrigued with the Archbishop of Mainz. He was, 
however, thwarted by Alexander, who sent Peter Damiani as 
legate to threaten the King with extreme spiritual penalties if 
he proceeded with the divorce. Urged by the Bishops, who 
dared not resist the papal commands, Henry submitted to Peter 
Damiani, received his Queen with honour, and became devoted 
to her in a short time, his domestic felicity relieving the tragedy 
of his later career. The submission of the King was followed by 
the humiliation of the German bishops, who had formed an 
aristocratic ring round the King during his minority, and were 
unwilling to relinquish their absolutism now that he had out- 
grown the leading-strings. A summons to answer a charge of 
simony brought the three leaders of the German hierarchy, 
among them the autocrat Hanno, to Rome, where they were 
formally condemned by the Easter Synod of 1070. The three 
Bishops returned to Germany completely humiliated by their 
reception in Rome ; Hanno of Cologne became a servitor in his 
own religious house, Siegfried of Mainz retired to Cluny, and 
Herman of Bamberg set to work to reform his episcopate on 
monastic lines. 

Meanwhile, the work of Hildebrand was already changing 
the face of Italy. Fresh disputes in Milan had brought new and 
more vital issues to the surface in connection with the con- 
secration of the Archbishop. In 1068, Archbishop Guido, the 
partisan of Cadalus, retired, and sent the deacon Godfrey, as a 
candidate for the Archbishopric, to King Henry. But the clergy 
of Milan rose in a body against this infringement of the privilege 
of St. Ambrose : they claimed the right to elect their own 
Archbishop, and forced Guido to apologise and resume office in 
his own person. Four years later, death released Guido from 
his burden, and reopened the question of the election. This 
t-ime the dispute turned on the right of ratification, and not as 
8 



114 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

before on the power of election, which was tacitly conceded to 
the Cathedral body. The question was whether the Pope or the 
German King had the right to confirm the appointment 
submitted to them by the Canons of Milan. Erlembald, the 
leader of the Patarines, declared for the Pope, but the Imperial 
party refused to nominate his candidate Atto, and forced the 
latter to repudiate his election. But the death of the anti-pope 
Cadalus at this juncture secured the ultimate triumph of the 
Hildebrandine party. Thanks to the efforts of Erlembald, Atto 
was confirmed in the Archbishopric, and, for the time at least, 
the German King had lost his foothold in the Lombard capital. 

Such was the situation in the North. In the South, con- 
ditions were even more favourable to the high papal party. With 
the exception of Richard of Aversa, the Normans vied with 
one another in zeal for the championship of the Holy See. 
As a race, these roving warriors seem to have been endowed 
with a peculiarly religious temperament. They had fallen on 
their knees and craved absolution from their pontifical captive 
after the battle of Civitate. They had undertaken the conquest 
of Sicily as a religious war, and dedicated their arms to the 
service of St. Peter. The great William had set out for the 
conquest of England under the papal banner, for which he had 
petitioned with a gratifying humility. The adoption of the 
cause of William the Conqueror was the individual effort of 
Hildebrand, and nothing is more characteristic of his infallible 
intuition than the persistency with which he urged the identi- 
fication of the papal interests with the Norman conquest of 
England. He was statesman enough to see beyond the piety of 
the English kings, when they came as pilgrims to the confession 
of St. Peter; he read between the lines of the ecclesiastical 
reports, and detected the insular spirit which animated Anglo- 
Catholicism from the time of Augustine; he recognised the 
geographical conditions by which nature fostered that spirit, and 
he welcomed as an antidote the project which would in all 
probability draw the island nation nearer to Europe, and so 
bring it into closer touch with Rome. 

Part II. Gregory VII. 

In twenty years of silent toil and unobtrusive draughtsman- 
ship, Hildebrand had laid the foundations of his wonderful 
creation. The death of Alexander II. in 1073 called him to 
direct its completion in the eyes of the world. " Let Hildebrand 
be Pope ! " was the cry of the Romans, which was echoed to the 



THE PAPACY UNDEE HILDEBEAND 115 

limits of Christendom. And indeed the time was fully ripe. 
The fabric was all prepared, and none but the designer himself 
could supply the few master-strokes which remained to be 
effected. His objects were so clearly defined that they need no 
classification, but they may be summarised under two aspects. 
On the one hand, there is his positive end — the reorganisation 
of the Church by means of the papal supremacy — and on the 
other hand, the negative aspect, which is the corollary of the 
former — the liberation of the Church from lay control in all the 
branches of its government. 

Hildebrand was consecrated on June 29, 1073, taking his 
title from his first patron, Gregory VI., in recognition of services 
to the Papacy which had been singularly unrequited. His 
election was not confirmed or ratified by the German King, who 
claimed no voice in the matter but acquiesced in its accomplish- 
ment. In a letter to Godfrey II. of Tuscany, the husband of the 
Duchess Matilda, Gregory VII. defines the attitude which he in- 
tended to adopt towards Henry IV. They were to be as father 
and son, but if the King were to fail in dutiful submission, then 
"we will not, God helping us, incur the curse pronounced on 
him ' who keepeth back his sword from blood ' ". The words 
contained a challenge, but if they reached the King they fell on 
deaf ears, for Henry was absorbed in a life and death struggle 
with his Saxon vassals. 

Gregory's first Council, in 1074, sounded the keynote of his 
pontificate in spiritual affairs, and prepared the way for the 
formation of parties. The decrees against simony and clerical 
marriage were re-issued with renewed force, and extreme penal- 
ties attached to them. Opposition broke out simultaneously in 
all the centres of Christendom where the decrees were pro- 
mulgated. In Rome itself, where moral conditions were at 
their worst, the clergy upon whom the penalties fell became the 
nucleus of opposition. The sixty " Mansionarii," or lay-deputies, 
who impersonated the Cardinals of St. Peter's, were expelled 
without mercy, and the Cathedral was no longer the scene of 
nocturnal orgies, which had outraged the feelings of so many 
pious pilgrims to the Apostles' grave. As at Milan the Patarines 
had forced the higher clergy into opposition to the New Papacy, 
so in Rome tbe execution of the decrees threw a large body of 
clerical offenders on to the anti-Gregorian side. At Passau, 
Bishop Altmann was nearly murdered in an attempt to enforce 
the edict. In Paris, a Synod returned to Gregory the answer 
that, "what he wanted was inacceptable and contrary to reason," 
and at Cambrai, the monks unanimously declared themselves in 



116 A SHOET H1STOEY OF THE PAPACY 

favour of " the usages (i.e. concubinage) which have been wisely- 
established by the indulgence of our fathers ". Henry IV. 
meanwhile maintained his outward neutrality and adopted an 
attitude of hostile inaction, dictated by the political crisis with 
which he was faced in Germany. 

In the face of an opposition so general and so concerted, it 
was necessary to bind the Normans still more closely to the 
Holy See. With this object in view Gregory visited South Italy 
in 1074, and endeavoured unsuccessfully to extort an oath of 
allegiance from Robert Guiscard. The Norman settlement was 
divided against itself, and Robert was jealous of Gregory's 
friendship with his rivals, Richard of Capua and Gisulf of 
Salerno. The oath which Robert refused and which Richard of 
Capua and Landulf of Benevento accepted, gave the primary 
allegiance of the Normans to the Papacy, and made their loyalty 
to Henry conditional on the Papal pleasure. Thus, secure in 
the renewed support of the Normans, Gregory returned to Rome, 
where he received a letter of profound self-abasement and peni- 
tent submission from Henry — a frame of mind dictated by his 
defeat at the hands of the Saxons. 

Events seemed to point to a forward policy. Europe was pre- 
pared for something startling, and in 1075, Gregory's second 
Council launched his ultimatum at his enemies. A decree was 
passed which in uncompromising language forbade the lay in- 
vestiture of the clergy in all its forms and throughout all the 
ranks of the hierarchy. The Investiture Edict was a momentous 
innovation, and its direct results were fifty years of war and 
centuries of controversy. And yet it was in reality the climax 
towards which events had been tending ever since the year 800. 
For nearly 300 years, spiritual and temporal principles had been 
at war in the political arena; all the failures of reform — the 
dark phases of secular tyranny in papal history, and the darker 
moments of ecclesiastical degradation — were traceable to the 
root antagonism which underlay spiritual and temporal interests, 
and the inability of contemporaries to distinguish between them. 
The insight of Hildebrand was required to formulate the dis- 
tinction, and his unerring political genius instantly recognised 
that it was a question of war to the hilt. If the Church was to 
be pure, the Church must be free, and the freedom of the Church 
meant freedom from lay control. Such was the logic of Hilde- 
brand, and so far he was justified. But he went further, and 
aimed at maintaining the temporal power of the Church intact, 
while at the same time he waged war against its natural con- 
sequence, the principle of secularism. It was here that his logic 



THE PAPACY UNDER HTLDEBEAND 117 

broke down. The metaphor of Petei Damiani. comparing the 
relation of the temporal to the spiritu: : : :ha: of the 

body to the soul expresses cnly one aspect of the Hildebrandine 
ideal ; the force of the simile was les troye when it was applied 
to a materialised conception of spirituality. 

U was not _:~ ever, the theoretical aspect of the que=~: ::-. 
which roused the militant spirit of I _ : - regory's contem- 
poraries saw in the Investiture Edict an unwarrantable encroach- 
ment on the part of the Papacy, which called foi immedi 

the head the opposition stood the German 
King, and Henry was temporarily in a strong | Dsition ow Log tc 
a series of mi'lita: y successes In Saxony. H_t Call of Erlenbald 
and the defeat of the Patarinea gave him the support of Milan, 
which e I a new anti-papal Archbishop in the German 

aid. But the Sis: blow in Rome itself by the 

rebel Cencius — half brigand and half noble ide d ~.:± -i the 

k su r of anti-reform with the s : izil : : f law! -. b a 

and thug s Baled Its doom. On Christmas Day 1075 xregory 

i celebrating Mass in St Maria Ms Cencins, sup- 

ported by Mndre : own class, rushed the building 

with drawn swo: - used the Pope by the hair, wounded him, 
and carried him off to his fortress »n the Oampagna. Here 
was ill-trea: md insulted by his ostein 

till he was dually rescued by the Etonian people, whc — -: 
and always his warmest allies in his own ten - = . The le- 

nity and courage of the lout :he episode sontrasft 

- favourably with the blv if hie aptors. He 

submitted with Spartan endurance tc the indignities heaped 
upon him. and a :ns of the virago women 

with stern silen: ead of begging for release he diet: 

his own terms tc i as prom sing _ him i: after a 

pilgrimage the i enitent to his feet — a promise 

which was faithfully kept by :y. while Cencius rewai 

his elemency by ravaging his lands and sur porting his enemies. 
Al bis release the Pope was carried back in triumph to St. 
Maria, where he finished the Mass which had been interruj I - i 
the day before. The conspiracy : encius hastened on the 
final struggle, and lent new bitterness to Gregory's _ ai 
attitude towards his snemi hethei :r no the enterprise 

was inspired or stimulated by Henry IV. is uncertain : it was, 
however, the immediate prelude :: the great personal duel 
which forms the climax of the papal-imperial straggle 

Henry IV. now threw off the last i nablance of caution. His 
.iHohenburg had revived his self-confidence, ancj the 



118 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

reception which was generally accorded to the Investiture Edict 
led him to under-estimate Gregory's position in Europe. Henry 
consequently recalled the counsellors whom Gregory had in- 
duced him to banish, he sold benefices, confirmed Tedald in the 
Archbishopric of Milan, and generally broke all the promises 
which he had made in his first letter to the Pope in 1073. 
Gregory would let nothing pass : he wrote a private letter 
demanding the King's instant repentance, to which the testimony 
of German Bishops was required. He compared Henry to Saul, 
offering him excommunication as the only alternative to sub- 
mission. He dwelt on the scandals of the King's private life, 
founding his accusations on vague rumours which stung Henry 
at a vulnerable point. Henry in fury expelled the legates from 
his court, and summoned a council at Worms, which, under the 
presidency of Siegfried of Mainz, pronounced the deposition of 
the Pope. Only the madness of blind rage could account for so 
inpolitic and indefensible a retaliation. The tone of the King's 
letter is the best clue to his amazing indiscretion. 

" Henry, not by usurpation but by God's holy will King, to 
Hildebrand, not Pope, but false monk. 

" This salutation hast thou deserved, upraiser of strife, thou 
who art cursed instead of blessed by every order in the Church. 
Let me be brief: the Archbishops, Bishops, and Priests thou 
hast trodden under thy feet as slaves devoid of will. Thou 
holdest them all as ignorant, thyself alone as wise. We suffer 
all from reverence for the seat of the Apostle; thou heldest 
reverence for fear, thou resistedst the royal power itself which 
God has conferred on us, and threatenedst to depose us, as if rule 
and empire stood not in God's hands but in thine. Christ has 
called us to the empire, but not thee to the Papacy. Thou ac- 
quiredst it by craft and fraud ; in scorn of thy monastic cowl 
thou obtainedst favour by gold, by favour arms, by arms the 
throne of peace, from which thou hast destroyed peace, for thou 
armedst the subjects against the powers that be and preachest 
treason against the Bishops called by God, to depose and con- 
demn whom thou even givest power to the laity. Wilt thou 
depose me, a blameless king, who am judged by God alone, 
since the Bishops left judgment over even an Apostate Julian 
to God. Does not Peter, the true Pope, say : ' Fear God, honour 
the King ' ? Because thou fearest not God, thou knowest not me, 
whom he has appointed. The curse of St. Paul touches thee, 
the judgment of all our Bishops condemns thee, and says to 
tjiee : ' Descend from the Apostolic throne which thou hast 



THE PAPACY UNDEE HILDEBEAND 119 

usurped, that another may take it, who will not do violence to 
religion but teach the true doctrine of Peter'. I, Henry, by 
God's grace King, with all our Bishops call on thee : — Descend, 
descend ! " 

The deposition had not even the semblance of legality to 
give it force, but it was enthusiastically ratified on its way to 
Rome by the Bishops of North Italy. Roland, a deacon of 
Parma, presented it to Gregory in the midst of the Lateran 
Council on February 22. The Prefect of the City drew his sword 
against the intrepid envoy, who was, however, protected from 
injury by the interference of Gregory himself. The Council 
rose as one man to defend the Pope, and even Henry's own 
mother, the dowager-Empress Agnes, attempted no protest in 
favour of her son. To Hildebrand it was the crucial moment 
of his career, and the profound religiousness underlying his 
energy came to the surface in his counter-reply. 

" Holy Peter, chief of the Apostles, incline I pray thee thine 
ear to me, hear me, thy servant, whom thou hast nourished 
from childhood, and hast saved to this day out of the hand of 
the enemies who have hated and still hate me because I serve 
thee in truth. Thou art my witness . . . that I counted it not 
robbery to ascend to thy chair, and that rather would I end 
my days in foreign lands than snatch at thy seat by worldly in- 
trigues. Of thy free grace, not because of my works, did it please 
thee that the Christian people entrusted to my care should obey 
me as thy delegate, and for thy sake has the power been granted 
me to bind and to loose in heaven and on earth. Being full 
of this confidence for the honour and protection of thy Church, 
in the name of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost, by virtue oi thy authority, I deprive King Henry, son of the 
Emperor Henry, who with unexampled pride has risen against 
thy Church, of the government of the whole Empire of Germany 
and Italy, I release all Christians from the oath which they have 
made, or yet may make to him, and hereby forbid any man to 
serve him as king. For it is meet that whosoever strives to 
diminish the honour of thy Church should himself lose the 
honour which he seems to have. And because he scorns to 
obey like a Christian, and returns not to the Lord, whom he 
has renounced by fellowship with the excommunicated, by 
divers evil deeds, by despising my admonitions administered 
for his salvation, and by separating himself from the Church, I 
do bind him in thy name with the bonds of anathema, that the 
nations may know and confess that thou art Peter, and that 



120 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

upon this rock the Son of the living God has built His Church, 
and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." l 

The words sound across the ages with the vibration which 
mere eloquence has never created. The splendour of the Hilde- 
brandine ideal, the dramatic intensity of the crisis, even the 
outstanding wonder of the personality of the Pope — these are 
insufficient to account for the effect of Gregory's anathema. The 
source of its unique significance in history, the secret of its 
immediate result, the hidden force which stunned his enemies 
and thrilled his adherents, was the inspiration of the Rock. 
Powerless against the spiritual challenge, Henry waited for the 
weakness of his position to be revealed. He looked round for his 
allies, and found them in the enemy's camp. Two-thirds of 
Germany were his feudal enemies, personal rivals such as Welf 
of Bavaria, Rudolf of Swabia and Berthold of Carinthia, who were 
in close intrigue with the legates. The Bishops who had signed 
the unfortunate edict of deposition against Gregory now hastened 
to make their submission, undertaking to hold no dealings with 
the excommunicated King. Henry called diets at Worms and at 
Mainz, but the results were fatal to his ebbing courage. His 
enemies meanwhile assembled themselves at Tribur in the 
autumn of 1076. Henry, from Oppenheim, tried to treat with the 
presiding princes, but the Council unanimously turned a deaf 
ear, and demanded his instant reconciliation with the Pope. 
Finally, the King's deposition was pronounced, and Henry was 
obliged to retire to Speyer as a private individual, to await the 
coming of his chief adversary, who was to pass judgment on him 
at a proposed Council to be held at Augsburg in February. 

The situation was desperate enough, and to add to it the 
King's spirit was broken. The isolation of his position became 
intolerable, and secretly, in mid-winter, he set out across the 
Mont Cenis, accompanied by his wife and child, and the few 
faithful courtiers who clung to him in pity. In Italy, the tide 
had turned against the Pope, and had the King come in a different 
guise he might have counted on the support of the North. But 
the fugitive pilgrim stirred the contempt of the proud Lombards, 
who turned their backs as he passed on his way to Canossa. 
Here Gregory had fixed his headquarters as the guest of the loyal 
Matilda, whose lands and forces were now as always at his dis- 
posal. For three days the German king waited in the outer 
Court craving with tears and prayers the privilege of humbling 

1 From the translation given by G, Kruger in " The Papacy : its Idea and Ex- 
ponents ". (Fisher Un win.) 



THE PAPACY UXDEE HILDEBRAND 121 

himself before the Pope. Daily the German bishops passed in 
before him to make their submission, scornfully pitying the royal 
suppliant as he knelt in the snow. At last the heart of Matilda 
was moved to compassion and her pleading won for Henry the 
privilege of a penitent. On January 28 Gregory absolved him, 
and received his crown into his hands until the Council should 
have acquitted him, and he should have sworn obedience to the 
papal will as the condition for again receiving it. The closing 
scene of the drama is the unconfirmed but probably authentic 
account of the Mass at Canossa. Gregory is reported to have 
solemnly cleared himself by oath, with the Host in his hand, 
from all the charges brought against him by his enemies. He 
then challenged the penitent King to follow his example, but 
Henry is said to have shrunk in guilt from the terrible test and 
confessed himself afraid. 

The victory of Canossa baffles analysis. It raises Hildebrand 
above the level of other heroes of action ; Caesar and Xapoleon 
pale before him in the glow which encircles the battle of ideas, 
for whereas they fought their way with their legions at their back, 
Hildebrand strove single-handed with the weapons of the spirit. 
Caesar's campaigns can be compared with other military successes, 
and the battle of Lodi is not without a parallel outside the career 
of Xapoleon ; but Canossa stands alone. 

Hildebrand's triumph was too complete, and the reaction was 
inevitable. As Henry retraced his steps, the disgust which his 
craven submission had aroused vented itself in anger against the 
Pope. The German princes had required the King to reconcile 
himself with Gregory, but they had not bargained for this. They 
refused to identify themselves with the humiliating treaty of 
Canossa. and disowning the King who had lost in their eyes his 
self-respect, they elected Rudolf of Swabia to succeed him. Henry 
was thus finally stung beyond endurance, and his moral recovery 
was signalised in his alliance with the Lombards. Gregory, on 
his side, collected his allies. Besides the forces of Matilda, he 
thought he could count on the support of the Xormans, and the 
impression was confirmed by the tardy homage of Eobert Guis- 
card, which was now rendered to him. Thus encouraged, Gregory 
tendered, the same oath to William of England, but he was met 
with a flat refusal from the Conqueror, who had already imbibed 
the independent spirit of his adopted kingdom. It was in 1080 
that the first symptom of decline in the papal fortunes made 
itself felt. Gregory realised that he could not count on Italy: 
the Xormans. absorbed in their own concerns, showed signs of 
cooling off, and it became necessary to look once more to 



122 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Germany. Up to this point, Gregory had treated both the parties 
in Germany as his antagonists. Henry had openly declared 
hostility, and banished the papal legates. The princes, on the 
other hand, had broken the papal treaty by electing Rudolf of 
Swabia as king. The Pope, however, decided to overlook the lesser 
offence for the more effective punishment of the greater, and con- 
sequently agreed to recognise Rudolf and ally himself with the 
German princes. He cursed Henry's arms, reiterating the poignant 
phrases of the earlier excommunication ; but repetition weakened 
the effect of the spiritual onset. Henry in reply created as 
anti-pope Wilbert of Ravenna — young, impetuous and ambitious 
— and with him prepared to march against Rome. At the same 
moment, Rudolf of Swabia died, and his successor Hermann of 
Luxemburg, was not influential enough to hold the interests of 
the opposition united. 

The four years' campaign forms a weary sequel to the earlier 
phase of the struggle, and its chief interest lies in the extra- 
ordinary display of energy on the part of Henry IV. From his 
encampment on the Neronian field, he set to work to revive all 
the old Imperial factions. He sought out the remnants of the 
Cadalus-Benzo party, he attracted the Tusculan interest, and 
revived the pretensions of the extinct Senate. He espoused the 
cause of anti-reform wherever he found an opportunity : every 
obsolete battle-cry found an echo in his camp. He fanned the 
republican spark in the dominions of Matilda, and sanctioned the 
revolts of Pisa, Lucca, and Genoa — three of her most valuable 
towns — which accepted the freedom of Imperial cities at the 
hands of the German King. To Ravenna, where Henry fixed his 
winter-quarters, the Eastern Emperor sent a request for his 
alliance against the Normans. 

In spite of the turn of the tide, Henry was repulsed in 1082 
in an attempt on Rome, and had to fall back on the Campagna. 
The attraction of the superman still clung about his rival, and 
showed itself in the tenacious loyalty of Matilda and the dogged 
fidelity of fickle Rome. Only after three years' resistance — in 
June, 1083 — did the populace waver in its enthusiasm. Gregory's 
friends implored him to make peace, but he refused to hear of 
compromise "unless the King lay down his crown, and make 
satisfaction to the Church". Henry's reply was to rush the 
Leonina, and establish himself in the newer half of the city. 
In February, 1084, the anti-pope Wilbert was crowned in St. 
Peter's as Clement III. ; he instantly proceeded to the coronation 
of Henry as Holy Roman Emperor. Gregory began to see that 
his days in Rome were numbered, and reluctantly fell back on 



THE PAPACY UNDEK HILDEBKAND 123 

his emergency policy. He issued a compelling summons to 
Robert Guiscard, knowing that it meant the sacrifice of Rome 
for the honour of St. Peter. Robert Guiscard came, and at his 
back a wild horde of fighting-men, composed of Saracens, 
Greeks, and Normans. The desperate off-scourings of Southern 
Europe were let loose in the streets of Rome. They made short 
work of Henry and his Germans, but they also struck the hero 
of Rome from his pedestal. Gregory had counted the cost. As 
he took his way southward, escorted by Robert, he knew that he 
could never show his face again in the city which had idolised 
him, which had saved his life in the conspiracy of Cencius, and 
stood by him in the hour of defeat — which in the last resort had 
made on his behalf the ultimate sacrifice. Still he did not 
flinch, and he was never more imperious than in this, the 
darkest hour. Was it the desperate courage of a hero in mis- 
fortune, determined to die worthily ; or did he see through the 
semblance of failure to the reality of victory ? At Monte Cassino 
he was received with affectionate honour by his friend, the 
Abbot Desiderius ; at Salerno he lived for a year as the guest of 
Robert Guiscard. In May, 1085, he called his followers to his 
side, and informed them that he had only eight days more to 
live. He faced death as he had encountered the crises of life, 
with the simplicity of entire devotedness. A statesman to the 
last, he made provision for the future, suggesting four possible 
successors, and among them his friend, Desiderius. Then, 
turning away from politics, which had never wearied him 
because he made them his highest self-expression, he pro- 
nounced his own epitaph : " I have loved righteousness and 
hated iniquity : therefore, I die in exile ". 

A contemporary of Gregory's — Cardinal Deusdedit — sum- 
marised the ideal which he lived to vindicate in twenty-seven 
propositions, expressed in the spirit, probably in the language, 
of Gregory himself. "The Roman Church," he writes, "has 
been founded by God alone. Only the Pope has the right to 
issue new laws, to found new sees, to depose bishops without 
the sentence of a synod. He alone has the right to make use 
of the imperial insignia. He alone offers his foot to be kissed 
by princes. His name alone is invoked in all Churches. His 
name Pope is unique in the world. He has the right to depose 
emperors. He can release subjects from their allegiance to 
unjust rulers. Without his authority no chapter, no book, 
is canonical. His decision is unimpeachable. He can be 
judged by no one. The Roman Church has never erred, and 
never will err throughout eternity, as the Holy Scriptures prove. 



124 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

If the Roman Pope has been canonically elected, he becomes 
holy by the merits of S. Peter. He only is Catholic who is in 
unity with the Roman Church ". 

In revolutionary courage, this ideal has never been equalled, 
but it owed its realisation — as far as it was realised — to the 
stamp of authority with which it seemed to be sealed. No one 
guessed at the extent of the innovation ; many there were 
who were not quite sure whether it was new at all. This was 
Hildebrand's secret, and its discovery was the greatest of his 
achievements. He looked back through the mists of the past, 
and claimed to draw aside the veil. He caught at the vague 
terminology of the " spiritualia," and gave it the force of a 
political logic. He applied the loose metaphors of the canonists 
to the existing conditions and pressed them to their ultimate 
conclusion. He found the Papacy a delegacy of the German 
kingdom ; he left it an independent and militant Empire. 



PART III 
THE MIDDLE AGES 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE INVESTITURE WAR, a.d. 1085-1122 

GREGORY'S magnificent career had ended in exile and 
apparent defeat, but his victory was still unconsum- 
mated and his achievement far from complete. The 
clue to the reality of his triumph is to be found in the epoch 
of which he is the founder, rather than in his own genera- 
tion. It requires the perspective of history to do justice 
to an idea of such immense significance as that of the Hilde- 
brandine Papacy. The followers who stood round the grave of 
the Pope at Salerno mourned for his ideals as those without 
hope, bewailing the colossal energy spent in vain, and the heroic 
toil so tragically unrequited. Many of them lived to see their 
pessimism disproved, for, sombre and despairing, they stood in 
the cheerless half-light which ushers in the splendour of dawn. 

The figure of Hildebrand stands midway between the old 
order and the new. Behind him lay the " Dark Ages " of chaos 
and anarchy, and before him stretch the " Middle Ages " of 
chivalry. For the period which is dominated by his memory 
is the era of the Crusades — of monastic revival in its 
noblest expression, and of mediaeval thought at its richest and 
best. Romance throughout the ages, and Romanticists from 
Mallory to Tennyson, have delighted to idealise and embellish 
its institutions, and to portray with unerring historical instinct 
the child-like sincerity of the most religious of all ages. 

At the head of the new Europe — at once the pivot on which 
the system turned, and the highest expression of the spirit of 
the age — stood the new Papacy, strong in the strength of its 
moral regeneration, and lifted high above the clouds of political 
idealism. Never before or after has the great papal idea 
approached so nearly to its fulfilment, and never was the mag- 
nificence of its conception more strikingly revealed. Hildebrand 
had died in exile, but the Hildebrandine ideal shone triumphant 
out of the darkness, and through the mists of apparent failure 
rose steadily to its zenith. 

For the moment, the outlook was dark enough. The little 

127 



128 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

group of friends who had followed Gregory to Salerno cowered 
before the on-coming storm, and sought in vain to replace the 
lost leader. For two years, Desiderius of Monte Casino fought 
to avoid the pontificate, which the Hildebrandine party, acting 
on the impulse of obedience to the memory of their hero, 
sought to thrust on his unwilling shoulders. Desiderius was a 
man of blameless life, and an able diplomatist, but he lacked 
the force of character to deal successfully with a crisis. Gregory 
had chosen him as his successor chiefly because he was on the 
spot, and because it was necessary that there should be no delay 
in pushing forward the campaign against Henry IV. Finally, 
the Roman populace forced Desiderius to acquiesce and assume 
the title of Victor III. The death of Robert Guiscard, however, 
and the defection of his son, Roger, made his position in Rome 
very critical, and his half-hearted efforts brought him defeat 
and expulsion at the hands of the Imperial Prefect. 

Then it was that the Gregorian party began to consider the 
advisability of electing another Pope, which had the effect of 
goading Desiderius to activity. From March, 1087, to the fol- 
lowing September, Victor III. and the anti-pope, Clement, 
fought face to face in and about the city of Rome. Victor's 
death interrupted the campaign, and made room for an abler 
man — the political lieutenant and the intellectual successor of 
Gregory VII. 

Urban II. 1 was a French nobleman, with the characteristic 
grace and agility of his nation and his class. As Abbot of Cluny 
he had served his apprenticeship as an ecclesiastical ruler, and 
as legate in Germany he had studied the policy and the prin- 
ciples of the hierarchical party. He came to Rome in 1088, 
escorted by a Norman army, and announced his intention of 
following in the footsteps of Hildebrand. 

Hurling defiance across the Tiber at his rival, Clement III., 
he set to work instantly to restore the fortunes of his demoral- 
ised party. The waning loyalty of the great Countess of Tus- 
cany was revived by an unsuitable marriage with the boy-heir 
of the House of Gwelf, which introduced for the first time a name 
hereafter to be linked inseparably with the political fortunes of 
the Papacy. The Gwelfs of Bavaria now played the part which 
Godfrey of Lotharingia had filled in the preceding generation, 
as the arch-rebels of the Imperial throne. Hence the alliance 
between the Houses of Bavaria and Tuscany served for the 
moment to infuse new strength into the Hildebrandine party. 

1 1088-99. 



THE INVESTITUKE WAR 129 

In 1090, Henry IV. found it necessary to come back to Italy to 
oppose this new alliance. Rome, weary of strife, turned to the 
Emperor as to a deliverer, and welcomed his decree of banish- 
ment directed against both the Popes. His recall of Clement 
III. in the following year, and the subsequent fall of Mantua, 
the centre of Matilda's resistance, created a panic in the papal 
party, and led to one of the most deplorable of their counter- 
moves. They turned to Conrad, the weak and discontented son 
of Henry IV., and incited him to revolt against his father. They 
encouraged his priggish disapproval of Henry, and threatened 
him with spiritual and temporal disasters if he continued in his 
opposition to Urban II. The disloyal and pliable youth was 
easily won : a Lombard league was formed in his name, and he 
was crowned anti-king at Milan. When, in 1093, Henry's second 
wife joined the rebels, his impetuous spirit was broken. The 
fortunes of Urban revived ; he returned to Rome in 1094, under 
the protection of the Frangipani, his debts were paid by Godfrey 
of Venddme, and the constructive aspect of his pontificate was 
in sight. 

Urban saw that the struggle between the Papacy and the Em- 
pire had loomed too large on the horizon since Canossa ; Christen- 
dom was tired of it, and demanded something else to think 
about. The panacea which he offered was not an original one, 
but in its production at this particular moment we detect a 
genuine flash of political inspiration. The capture of Jerusalem 
by the Turks, in 1076, had brought a flock of outraged pilgrims 
to Rome, with tales of sacrilege and atrocity, which had moved 
their hearers to the kindred mediaeval passions of pity and 
ferocity. Hildebrand took up the cause as warmly as his politi- 
cal pre-occupations would admit, and Robert Guiscard had al- 
ready responded to the appeal. But it was reserved for Urban 
II. to give the movement its pan-European setting, and to assign 
to it its importance in history. In March, 1095, Urban preached 
the first Crusade at the Council of Piacenza. The response 
which greeted his appeal justified him in calling a second and 
more general assembly at Clermont in the following November. 
Peter the Hermit carried the tidings over the Alps, and urged 
all sinners to win unconditional forgiveness by means of the 
Holy War. The congenial penance of fighting and pillage was 
offered as a substitute for the wearisome pilgrimage or the 
humiliating personal chastisement. What wonder that Urban 
was greeted at Clermont by a crowd which committed him irre- 
vocably to the Crusading enterprise, on a scale which exceeded 
all anticipation ? 
9 



130 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

Among the crowd of saints and sinners which mobilised 
under the Crusading banner, there was no lack of pure en- 
thusiasm for the Holy Sepulchre to be set ablaze by the 
eloquence of the Pope. But it was to the rough hearts of the 
warrior -penitents that his words were more urgently directed. 
" Rise, turn your weapons, dripping with the blood of your 
brothers, against the enemy of the Christian faith. You, 
oppressors of orphans and widows ; you, murderers and violators 
of Churches ; you, robbers of the property of others ; you, who 
accept money to shed the blood of Christians ; you, who like 
vultures are drawn by the scent of the battle-field, hasten, as 
you love your souls, under your Captain Christ to the rescue of 
Jerusalem. All you who are guilty of such sins as exclude you 
from the kingdom of God, ransom yourselves at this price, for 
such is the will of God ". 

The shout of " Dieu le veult" sealed the words of the Pope 
with the assent of Christendom, and for better or worse the first 
Crusade was launched. The devout Normans of Italy, under 
their hero-leaders Tancred and Boemund, were the first to re- 
spond ; their brothers of France and England, under Robert of 
Flanders, Robert of Normandy, and Stephen of Blois, and the 
royal forces of France under the king's brother, Hugh of Verman- 
dois, followed in course of time. The Pope blessed the forces at 
Lucca, and pronounced the plenary absolution on the just and 
the unjust among them. As they passed through Rome and 
knelt before the shrine of the Apostles, the partisans of the 
powerless anti-pope threw missiles from the roof of St. Peter's on 
to the heads of the kneeling warriors, thus proving by their petty 
demonstration their recognition of Urban's triumph. 

The Emperor alone had held aloof from the first Crusade, 
and in so doing missed the greatest opportunity of his life. The 
defection of Henry IV. enabled the Popes thereafter to claim, as 
originators of the idea, to have effected the results which ensued. 
And in this assumption they were undoubtedly justified. The 
leadership of Europe was at stake ; the Emperor, absorbed in his 
own concerns, let the opportunity pass, and the Pope, as so often 
before, stepped into the breach. 

Urban did not long survive his great enterprise, and his death 
in 1099 marks the passing of Hildebrand's generation. He was 
soon followed to the grave by his rival, Clement III., in whose 
harassed life all recognised that of a hero, and some that of a 
saint. The miracles worked at his grave caused some difficulty 
to the successor of Urban, who was obliged in self-defence to 
throw his bones into the Tiber. In 1101, young Conrad — the 



THE INVESTITUEE WAE 131 

hope of the hierarchical party — also died, and, five years later, 
the death of his father brought the epilogue of the Canossa 
drama to an end. Henry IV. died, excommunicated and 
deposed, but not altogether inglorious. Throughout his ad- 
venturous life he had never wanted a small band of faithful 
adherents, ready to serve him to the death, and at the close, 
when it was too late to be of any assistance, he won back the 
support of the young Gwelf, who had quarrelled with Matilda 
and broken with the Gregorian party. Henry had failed because, 
unlike Gregory, his aims had been too diffuse, and his energy 
too spasmodic. The absence of any consistent object in his 
policy threw him always on the defensive, and the man who 
rights with his back to the wall has not much scope for initiative. 
For this reason, Henry was always seen at his best after defeat ; 
his volatile nature made him as quick to recover from a blow as 
to be quelled by it. The recovery of the penitent of Canossa 
after his humiliation is only less remarkable than the victory of 
Gregory, and it is not in every generation that an Emperor has 
such an adversary to face. 

The troubled reign of Paschalis II. — a Cluniac monk of 
saintly character and insufficient political force — ushers in the 
new generation. The first six years of his pontificate were 
monopolised by petty wars with the barons, who in the absence 
of Imperial authority were eager to assert their feudal indepen- 
dence in repeated attacks on the Papacy. The great House of 
Colonna offered territorial opposition in Latium. The Corsi 
defied Paschalis in Rome and, assisted by the Margrave Werner, 
supported Maginulf as anti-pope, and forced Paschalis to flee 
to the Tiber island for refuge. A breathing-space in 1106 gave 
an opening for the real business of the pontificate — the solution 
of the Investiture problem. Everyone longed for peace, but 
no one was willing to pay the price. The compromise proposed 
by Paschalis at the Diet of Guastalla was, moreover, inadequate 
and impossible. His suggestion was that the Investiture Edict 
should be enforced but that the schismatic Bishops appointed 
by Clement III. should be recognised. The settlement was 
to be concluded the following Christmas at Augsburg. The 
sole result was the increase of the general discontent on both 
sides. Paschalis in despair set out for France, but in his 
absence the baronial revolt broke out afresh, and the Pope was 
obliged to force his way back to Rome with the assistance of a 
Norman escort. 

Such was the state of affairs when, in 1110, Henry V. came 
to claim the Imperial Crown which the distracted Pope had 



132 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

promised to bestow on him in return for a vague oath of 
reverence to the Church. The Emperor-designate was the least 
attractive of the interesting series of Imperial candidates who 
found their way across the Alps in the Middle Ages. Cold and 
calculating, he compels our admiration by his very relentless- 
ness in the pursuance of his immediate end. While Paschalis 
hid his fears behind bold words and reissued the Investiture 
Edict, while he summoned the Normans to protect him, Henry 
pressed on through Lombardy with 30,000 troops at his back. 
The Lombards, proud of their new independence, tried to oppose 
him, but Henry burnt every fortress which offered resistance, 
and even Matilda was forced to submit and take the oath of 
vassalage. 

Paschalis sent his envoys to Henry at Turin, where the 
Pope's second peace proposition was laid before him. The new 
scheme, which looks at first sight like a quixotic sacrifice on the 
part of the Pope, was, in reality, the last resort of an exhausted 
combatant. Paschalis proposed that the Bishops should sur- 
render their temporal fiefs and live on their tithes, while the 
Emperor on his side was to renounce the right of investiture. 
The Church was to be poor, but free : in return for the political 
advantage of their new status, the Bishops were to embrace the 
Apostolic condition of personal poverty. But the Papacy, on the 
other hand, was to retain its Dominium intact, and the Bishops 
were not slow to seize upon the inconsistency underlying this 
aspect of the settlement. The attitude which Henry adopted 
does more credit to his astuteness than to his sincerity. He 
perused the treaty, saw through it, and beyond it, to the havoc 
which it would create, and finally adopted it. Relentless and 
inscrutable, he pressed on to Rome, concealing under a mask of 
passive disdain the passions of an avenger of Canossa. He took 
no pains to ingratiate himself with the crowd which assembled 
at Monte Mario to do him honour ; he answered their flowery 
Latin orations in rough German, and laughed at the solemn 
greetings of the seholse. 

It was not until the decree of Paschalis was read in St. 
Peter's that the attitude of Henry was finally revealed. A 
storm of indignation from the dispossessed Bishops greeted the 
Pope's well-meaning manifesto. Henry, by a bold volte-face, 
dissociated himself from the treaty, lent his sympathy to the 
Bishops, and fanned the general discontent which the papal 
action had excited. Surrounded by German swords and 
menaced by episcopal threats, Paschalis found himself at the 
mercy of the Emperor. The populace of Rome tried to come to 



THE INVESTITUKE WAE 133 

the rescue, and nearly succeeded ; the battle of the Leonina is 
a marked instance of what an unarmed mob of loyal ruffians 
can do against a trained force of paid warriors. But the 
Emperor eluded the Romans by escaping to the Sabina by night, 
taking with him the Pope and the whole papal Curia. Hounded 
in droves along the marshy roads, the Cardinals learnt the 
methods of German warfare. For 61 days, they were insulted 
and oppressed in the Emperor's tents, while the Emperor sought 
in vain to extort from Paschalis a promise of unconditional 
surrender on the Investiture question. At last, the pleading of 
the Cardinals and the threats of massacring all the prisoners 
which Henry put forward, reduced the Pope to submission. 
Paschalis did not lack personal courage, but he was vanquished 
because his heart was not proof against the misery of war. He 
yielded with dignity and good faith. " I tender this oath in 
order that you may fulfil yours," he said, when Henry con- 
fronted him with the charter of surrender. 

The verbal definition of division of authority was designed 
to conceal, as far as possible, the humiliation of the Pope. 

"Thou shalt impart Investiture with ring and staff to the 
Bishops and Abbots of thine Empire, who shall be elected with- 
out force and simony; after their canonical installation they 
shall receive consecration from the Bishop whose duty it is to 
give it. . . . Shall any spiritual or secular power or person dare 
to despise or subvert this our privilegium, he shall be entangled 
within the chains of our anathema and be deprived of all 
honours. May the divine mercy protect all who respect it, and 
grant thy Majesty a happy Empire." 

The Coronation, which was hurried through in April, 1111, 
sealed the one-sided peace. It was not the fault of the Pope 
that the settlement was not final. Paschalis' sincerity is quite 
indisputable, both at the time, and subsequently. "May he 
who attempts to violate this treaty be thus severed from the 
kingdom of God," he said, as he solemnly broke the Host before 
his enemies. But he had reckoned without the Gregorian party, 
which was still the dominant force in papal politics. No sooner 
was the Pope's submission known than a synod of protest was 
summoned to condemn both himself and his charter. The 
counter-decrees of Urban and Gregory were revived, and the 
new Privilegium was annulled. He was only saved from 
personal condemnation through the championship of Ivo of 
Chartres, who procured his acquittal on the ground that he had 
acted under compulsion. Paschalis was not ready at first to 
shelter himself behind the plea of weakness : he resented the 



134 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

tone of the hierarchs, and he still meant to keep faith with 
Henry. But he was attempting the impossible in trying to 
harmonise two irreconcilable principles, and, before long, he 
was obliged to reopen the whole contest. The Lateran Council 
of 1112, summoned by Paschalis to decide the fate of the Privi- 
legium, acquitted the Pope on the grounds brought forward by 
Ivo of Chartres, but annulled his Charter, and, as a matter of 
form, sent the counter-decrees to the Emperor for ratification, 
which was, of course, refused. 

Once more Paschalis' efforts to put an end to the Investiture 
contest had broken down. He had tried to cry peace where 
there was no peace, to slur over discord, and to throw dust in 
the eyes of both parties. It is, however, difficult to condemn 
him for shrinking from the alternative course which Hildebrand 
might have adopted. Paschalis had taken the weak line 
deliberately, because his desire for immediate peace outweighed 
all other considerations, and because he was not prepared to 
trust his cause to the fortune of war. From the point of view 
of high papal policy, he was the wrong man in the wrong place, 
but this does not prevent us from paying the tribute of respect 
to his unusual grace of character. The sincere humility of his 
confession of failure before the Council, combined with his 
refusal to retaliate against Henry either by word or deed, forms 
a picture in which his political inadequacy is mitigated by his 
moral generosity. 

The Investiture problem was as far from a logical solution as 
ever, but when Henry left Italy, after the Lateran Council, its 
importance paled for a time before the rise of a newer and more 
practical contest. In July, 1115, the great Countess of Tuscany 
died at the age of seventy, leaving her possessions to the Papacy 
with a grand and lavish vagueness which introduced a new 
phase of the great mediaeval controversy. Both sides were, in a 
sense, prepared for it: Hildebrand had known of Matilda's 
intention, and the scheme was the real cause of her quarrel with 
the young Gwelf. But the indefinite wording of the donation, 
and the reasonable disputes which arose as to what she actually 
had meant, produced a four-sided struggle which took Italy 
entirely by surprise. The claim of the Papacy to inherit the 
whole of Matilda's dominions was disputed in three directions, 
and in each case with some semblance of validity. Gwelf V. 
claimed that at least her allodial lands belonged to him of right 
as her wedded lord. The Emperor set out to seize her imperial 
fiefs, and also brought forward a further claim to the allodial 
lands as a member of the House of Lorraine, and consequent 



THE INVESTITURE WAE 135 

heir to the claims of Matilda's first husband, Godfrey. Still 
more formidable than the personal rivals of the Papal heritage 
were the republican constitutions of the cities which had success- 
fully attained freedom in the lifetime of Matilda. Against some 
of these new and vigorous democracies, the Popes recognised at 
once that it was hopeless to protest : Pisa, Lucca, Siena, Flor- 
ence and Arezzo were never even claimed. But Modena, 
Reggio, Mantua and Parma were intermittently subjugated, 
while Ferrara submitted at once as an actual fief. 

The importance of Matilda's donation is best seen in the 
immense alteration which it produced in the position of the 
Papacy. Hildebrand had laboured that the Church might be 
free ; Matilda gave it the wherewithal of freedom. In the 
struggle to realise the bequest, and the clash of interests which 
was involved, the Popes were not merely acting as mercenary 
and misguided agents of ambition. It should not be forgotten 
that real principles of statesmanship were at stake — principles 
which are open both to political criticism and to moral censure 
from the modern point of view, but which to the average 
mediaeval churchman were both ethically and logically inviol- 
able. It is true that the principle of temporal power was not 
allowed to pass unchallenged, and that the controversy was 
carried very soon into the region of ideas. But the contests of 
the schoolmen are only mediaeval on the one side : Abelard and 
Arnold of Brescia, however much they seem to belong to the 
Middle Ages in their methods, their language, and their manner 
of thinking, are in reality the precursors of Wyclif and of 
Luther — of Protestantism and — untechnically speaking — of 
modernism. 

But not so the Emperor Henry V., who set out for Rome in 
1116, with the twofold object of claiming Matilda's lands for the 
Empire, and punishing the Pope for his retraction of the Privi- 
legium of Investiture. He could not have timed his arrival in 
Rome better for his purposes. Paschalis had foolishly embroiled 
himself with the populace over a question of electing the Prefect. 
He was obliged to flee from the city, leaving Ptolemy of Tusculum 
in charge of the ecclesiastical property in his absence. Never 
did emperor receive a warmer welcome in the city. The popu- 
lace greeted him with joy, and listened respectfully to his bom- 
bastic speech in the market-place, forgetful of his former 
insolence towards them. He confirmed the young Prefect 
Peter, whose election the Pope had opposed. He won over 
Ptolemy of Tusculum by giving him his illegitimate daughter 
in marriage, and caused the legate Burdinus to perform the 



136 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

customary repetition of the coronation ceremony on Easter 
Day. Only the higher clergy turned their backs on him, and 
rejected his overtures, but their defection finally turned the 
scale. Unaccountably as ever, Rome soon wearied of Henry, 
and, incited by the Cardinals, rallied once more to the Papal 
standard. But the final effort, by which the Pope re- 
gained the city, killed him. Paschalis was old, and life had 
put to a severe test his limited powers. Few Popes have 
had a more unfortunate career, but he died in the hour 
of victory. 

His successor, John of Gaeta, was elected, by a majority of 
Cardinals, in secret, in accordance with the decree of Nicholas II. 
Old and infirm, he struggled against the dignity, and submitted 
only to compulsion. Immediately after the election occurred 
one of the curious cases of repetition which are not infrequent 
among the dramatic episodes of history. Cencius Frangipani, 
with a mob of furious citizens at his back, rushed into the con- 
clave, bound the Cardinals, and trod the old Pope under foot. 
John of Gaeta, newly-elected Gelasius II., was carried off and 
imprisoned in the Frangipani castle, whence he was finally re- 
leased, like a second Hildebrand, by the Roman people. Hardly 
had he regained his liberty when Henry V. swept down 
on Rome to retrieve his fortunes. In the time of Paschalis, 
Gelasius had already undergone captivity at the hands of the 
Emperor, and he was unwilling to repeat the experience. He 
therefore fled to Gaeta, where to his surprise he was welcomed 
by a readily- equipped host of loyal Normans, eager to do him 
homage. 

History again repeats itself in the scene which followed. We 
find Gelasius, deserted by the Normans, and opposed in Rome 
by Burdinus, now raised by Henry to fill the role of anti-pope. 
The deluge of anathemas and mutual recriminations which 
thunder across the city recall the days of Benzo and Damiani. 
An attack on Gelasius at Mass in the Church of San Prassede 
led to his escape from Rome and honourable reception in France, 
where he ended his troubled pontificate in 1119. 

He was succeeded by one of the most fortunate Popes of the 
period, whose appointment is a testimony to the wisdom of his 
generation. Guido of Vienne was the chief Bishop of France ; 
he was related both to the King of France and to the Emperor, 
and, beyond his royal lineage, he had exceptional talents and an 
attractive manner to recommend him. He at once took a de- 
cided line on the Investiture question. At Rheims, on his way 
to Rome, he reissued the Investiture Edict of Hildebrand, and 



THE INVESTITUEE WAB 137 

he was supported by four hundred and twenty-four Bishops, who 
threw down their tapers as a signal of defiance to the Emperor. 
Results justified his determination, for it was based on the pro- 
foundest desire for unity. The magnificence of the new Pope's 
reception in Rome and the enthusiasm of the populace annihil- 
ated the enfeebled party of Burdinus, who surrendered after a 
show of resistance at Sutri. Meanwhile Guido, who took the 
name of Calixtus II., had come to an understanding with his 
cousin the Emperor, and a series of German Diets undertook the 
onus of preparing a treaty. The results of their deliberations 
were embodied in the Concordat of Worms, which was put for- 
ward by the Council in September, 1122. The Pope deputed 
Lambert of Ostia, a trained canonist, to act for him, and he 
could not have chosen a more competent representative. Two 
short treaties comprised the gist of the settlement, which put 
an end to half a century of conflict. 

"I, Henry, for the love of God, the Holy Roman Church, and 
of the Lord Pope Calixtus, and for the salvation of my soul, 
abandon to God, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to the 
Holy Catholic Church, all investiture by the ring and the staff, 
and I grant that in all the churches of my Empire there be 
freedom of election and free consecration. I will restore all the 
possessions and jurisdictions of St. Peter which have been taken 
away since the beginning of this quarrel. I will give true peace 
to the Lord Pope Calixtus and to the Holy Roman Church, and 
I will faithfully help the Holy Roman Church whenever she in- 
vokes my aid." 

"I, Calixtus, the Bishop, grant to Henry, Emperor of the 
Romans, that the election of bishops and abbots shall take place 
in thy presence without simony or violence, so that if any dis- 
cord arise, thou mayest grant thy approbation and support to 
the most worthy candidate, after the counsel of the Metropolitan 
and his suffragans. Let the Prelate-elect receive from thee thy 
sceptre, the property and immunities of his office, and let him 
fulfil his obligations to thee arising from these. In other parts 
of the Empire let the Prelate receive his regalia six months 
after his consecration and fulfil the duties arising from them. 
I grant true peace to thee and all who have been of thy party 
during the times of discord." 

These two treaties, duly signed by Henry and Calixtus 
respectively, effected the only compromise possible on the 
question which lay at the root of the conflict between the 
Papacy and the Emperor. Neither side capitulated, and neither 
could boast any decisive victory. The settlement was carefully 



138 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

designed to conceal any semblence of humiliation on the one 
hand or of triumph on the other. If either side seemed to have 
scored in the immediate question at issue, it was the Pope: if 
either side had actually gained any substantial advantage, it 
was the Emperor. But the honours of war were shadowy and 
indecisive; sheer weariness had brought both sides to an under- 
standing, and only a sense of the futility of strife prevented a 
revival of the Investiture struggle. It was only one phase of a 
larger antagonism : it was past and gone, and Europe rejoiced to 
see the last of it, but the deeper issues remained as far from 
solution as ever. 

Calixtus had the good fortune to die while the world was still 
under the impression that the Papacy had won a complete and 
decisive victory. His successor, Honorius II. (1124-1130), 
although he was elected for his conspicious abilities, had neither 
the personality nor the prestige to carry on his work. He was 
the same Lambert of Ostia whom Calixtus had chosen to 
represent him at Worms, but the skilled lawyer had not the 
makings of an equally successful Pope. Moreover, he started at 
a disadvantage, owing to the revival of factions among the 
Roman nobility, with unprecedented bitterness and competitive 
strife. Honorius was the candidate of the Frangipani, and 
against him was arrayed the might of the Pierleoni. The 
Frangipani were old and aristocratic; the Pierleoni were 
parvenus of Jewish origin with democratic sympathies. The 
death of the childless Emperor Henry V. in 1125 carried the 
politics of papal Rome into Germany. Honorius and the 
Frangipani faction favoured the middle-aged and orthodox 
Lothair of Supplinburg against his young and magnificent rival 
Frederick Hohenstaufen, who, with his brother Conrad, repre- 
sented the family of Weiblingen. The personal strife between 
the rival claimants of the Imperial throne holds a fictitious 
importance in history as the peg on which a contest of principles 
was hung by later ages. Long after the quarrel between Lothair 
and Frederick was forgotten, the war-cries of Gwelf and 
Ghibelline resounded in the streets of the Italian cities, and 
rallied the partisans of causes as yet unborn. But in the time 
of Honorius, the duel was a personal one, which indirectly 
involved the Pope, but in which no clash of principles can be 
traced, except a vague antagonism between the clericalism of 
Lothair and the sturdy independence of Frederick. 

Before Honorius died, he was forced reluctantly to sanction 
the formation of the kingdom of Naples by Roger of Sicily, who 
had succeeded in making himself Duke of Apulia in spite of the 



THE INVESTITUEE WAE 139 

persistent opposition of the Pope. The sheerest necessity had 
brought Honorius to the recognition of the Neapolitan monarchy, 
for he realised the danger to the Papacy which it threatened, 
and his successors had frequent cause to regret the sanction 
which established a rival power in South Italy and a natural foe 
at their gates. 

On the death of Honorius in 1130, the dualism which had 
grown up during his reign broke out into schism. The Gwelf 
candidate, Peter Pierleoni, stood face to face with a Ghibelline 
rival, Gregory of St. Angelo. Peter Pierleoni, who took the 
name of Anaclete II., was a remarkable person, and he deserved 
a better chance of success. He had been trained for the 
Papacy by his father, and he showed his astuteness by the pains 
which he took to secure the alliance of the Frangipani, whose 
adhesion meant ascendancy in Rome. But his Jewish origin 
was against him: anti-Semitic feeling was less strong in Italy 
than elsewhere, but it gave to his opponent an overwhelming 
ascendancy in Europe. Besides, Gregory had on his side the 
advantage of priority of election, and in Bernard of Clairvaux 
he found a champion whose personal influence alone outweighed 
any claims which could be advanced by Anaclete. To complete 
the drawbacks which threw Anaclete at the outset on to the 
losing side, the Gwelfic faction of the Normans deserted him, 
and thus threw him on to the mercy of Roger of Sicily. 
Accordingly, at the Council of Rheims, where Anaclete was 
excommunicated by Innocent II., England, France, and Spain 
signified their assent through the agency of Bernard of Clair- 
vaux. 

The schism was the ostensible pretext of two expeditions 
into Italy by the Emperor Lothair, in both of which he showed 
his incompetence, and in neither did he effect any solution of 
the crisis. In the earlier expedition of 1132 he threw away a 
magnificent opportunity by rejecting the petition of Anaclete for 
an impartial synod, in which Lothair might have played the 
part which Henry III. played at Sutri. Instead of acting as 
arbiter in the struggle, Lothair identified himself with the 
interests of Innocent II., allowed the Frangipani to betray Rome 
into his hands, and in 1133 had himself crowned by the 
Ghibelline Pope in St. Peter's. But the power of Anaclete in 
the south made it impossible for the Emperor to stay in Italy, 
and soon after his return, he was followed in flight by the Pope 
who had crowned him. 

The second expedition of Lothair in 1137 was less abortive 
than the first. In the interval, circumstances had changed in 



140 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

his favour. He had become reconciled with the Hohenstaufen 
brothers in Germany, while in Italy the genius of Bernard of 
Clairvaux had been at work with striking results. Pisa, Milan, 
and North Italy threw themselves unreservedly on to the side of 
Innocent, and Roger of Apulia alone remained loyal to Anaclete. 
Incited by Bernard's invocation, Lothair descended on Bene- 
vento, and subdued it in the name of the Holy Roman Empire. 
Leaving St. Bernard to convert Rome from its allegiance to 
Anaclete, he pressed on towards the South and drove Roger out 
of Apulia. At this juncture Anaclete died, and the schism 
practically came to an end. When, in 1139, the Lateran Council 
announced its close, Roger of Sicily and the Pierleoni were the 
only exceptions to the general unanimity in favour of Innocent II. 
Roger elected Victor IX. to carry on the opposition of Anaclete, 
but the victorious Ghibellines treated him as negligible, and 
excommunicated his patron. The Pierleoni were ignominiously 
bought off, but the Normans offered battle. The episode which 
followed was characteristic of the history of the Italian 
Normans. Roger's son took Innocent prisoner; then knelt 
before his captive to impose upon him the terms of a conqueror. 
Roger required his instant release from the spiritual ban, and 
his confirmation of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The proud 
submission of the Pope and the deferential dictatorship of the 
King were the recurring incidents of a drama which repeats itself 
intermittently throughout mediaeval history. But the occasion 
was unique ; that which the Popes had dreaded ever since the 
first coming of the Normans had come to pass. Their ascendancy 
in South Italy was no longer unrivalled, and Benevento alone 
remained to them of the rich dominions which had been the pride 
of their forefathers. 

But a deeper calamity was at hand, and, in the face of more 
deadly misfortunes, the Popes had little leisure to mourn the 
loss of their ascendancy in the South. Two years after the 
pact with Roger, Innocent was faced with an insignificant 
disturbance, which produced one of the most momentous crises 
of Papal history. A small provincial dispute with the offending 
city of Tivoli, and the temperate action of Innocent in razing 
the walls of the little town instead of destroying it altogether, 
led to an attack of the Roman populace on the Pope. The 
revolt grew to alarming proportions, and reached its height in 
September, 1143, when the death of Innocent diverted it into a 
new channel. But hitherto there had been nothing very dis- 
tinctive or particularly ominous about the rebellion, which 
had many a parallel in past history, and showed no peculiar 



THE INVESTITUEE WAE 141 

features to distinguish it from others of the same kind. But 
after the death of the Pope, new forces joined themselves to the 
old, and the time-honoured lawlessness of Rome found a fresh 
outlet in the new intellectual democratic movement which 
emanated from the schools of Paris. 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT, a.d. 1122-1179 

MENTAL activity has never found a wider range, or met 
with a readier enthusiasm, than in the twelfth cen- 
tury. Thanks to the regeneration of the Papacy, 
Europe was spiritually awake as it had never been before, and 
ar.y appeal to the higher nature of man could be sure of a 
unique opportunity. 

"There are diversities of gifts but the same spirit." The 
same fervour which sent Raymond of Toulouse to the Crusades 
sent Robert of Moleme into the wilds to found the first Cister- 
cian monastery. The extravagant ecclesiasticism of Bernard of 
Clairvaux has its counterpart in the revolutionary daring of 
Abelard. Mysticism and speculation sprang from the same 
root ; the ardour of faith was one with the ardour of criticism. 
The universal quickening brought to the surface all the con- 
tradictions which underlay the structure of mediaeval society : 
in the relentless light of the new appeal to reason, half of the 
world found itself at enmity with the other half, and principles 
which had hitherto not seemed inconsistent suddenly displayed 
themselves in the sharpest antagonism. 

It was only to be expected that the new spirit of inquiry 
should turn its sword inwards. The Papacy, from which it 
largely emanated, became the object of its attack. In creating 
an efficient clergy, Hildebrand had unintentionally armed a 
body of critics, and in placing ecclesiastical affairs in the fore- 
front of European interest, he laid the new Papacy open to the 
full brunt of attack. The stronghold of the new movement in 
its intellectual aspect was Paris, where scholars of all nations 
and every degree came together to enjoy the practice of the 
dialectic method, which had been revived by the first of the 
illustrious professors of Paris, William of Champeaux, and 
his disciple Abelard. The freedom and unrestraint which 
characterised the informal discussions of the schools of Paris 
naturally evoked the opposition of conservative Churchmen, 

142 



MAPI. ITALY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 

during the Wars between 
the Empire and the Papacy. 
(C 1155-1274.) 




THE KEPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 143 

who hated the new questioning spirit, and suspected the whole 
tenor of secular learning. Foremost among them was Bernard 
of Clairvaux — the "oracle of Europe" — whose individual piety 
and unusual gift of personality made him the supreme influence 
in Europe. It was he who had put an end to the schism of 
1130, and one Pope at least owed his pontificate entirely to the 
fact that he was his friend. He stood for everything which 
Abelard lived to oppose — tradition, orthodoxy, and the extreme 
limit of sacerdotal power. He was the foremost representative 
of a large class of humanity for whom speculation has no charm, 
and free discussion no attraction. If there was anyone whom 
he hated worse than Abelard it was his ardent young pupil, 
Arnold of Brescia, who was destined to become the political 
exponent of his master's views. It was Arnold who carried the 
contests of the schools into the region of facts ; his career forms 
the immediate link between Paris and Rome. 

In Italy, the intellectual movement took another form, and 
the philosophical contests of Paris were supplanted by the legal 
controversies of Bologna. The renaissance of Roman Law began 
even earlier than the philosophical movement, and the schools 
of Pavia and Bologna were organised in the eleventh century, 
before the schools of Paris had grouped themselves round their 
teachers. Throughout the Dark Ages the study of Roman 
law had survived side by side with the early development of 
ecclesiastical Canon law. There was at first no rivalry between 
the two systems ; in the contest of the eleventh century between 
the Papacy and the Empire, both sides alike ransacked the 
texts of ancient Rome for legal weapons. Irnerius, the famous 
exponent of Justinian, began his career as the protege of the 
Countess Matilda ; but he found no difficulty in afterwards 
obtaining the patronage of her opponent, Henry V. His lectures 
at Bologna showed at first neither Gwelf nor Ghibelline colour, 
and it was not until 1118, when he took up the cause of the 
anti-pope, that his politics became identified with the school of 
law which he professed. From that moment the civil jurists 
began to interpret Roman law in the interests of the Empire, 
while the Canonists became openly hostile. The legal contest 
became merged in the great European duel, and it introduced 
new combatants ; it sharpened the points of the weapons 
which on both sides had become blunted with long usage. The 
continual encounters of the two systems increased the vigour 
of both. The civil law was not allowed to outstrip its rival, and 
even in their texts the Canonists recognised no defeat. The 
"Glossaries" of the civilians were confronted first with the 



144 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

"Codes" of Ivo of Chartres, and later by the famous "Decretum" 
of Gratian which appeared about 1142. 

The revival of Roman law, in addition to the support which 
it gave to the Imperial principle, had a further effect of immense 
importance in the history of papal Rome. It brought the past 
once more into vivid contact with the present. The study of 
the codes led men back to the study of the civic life of ancient 
Rome. The extension of the Caesarean ideal produced a re- 
action in favour of the republican principle. The Romans had 
watched with jealous interest the acquisition of freedom by the 
cities of North Italy during the Investiture war : why should 
Pisa and Genoa be free while Rome was in bondage? Which of 
the Northern cities could base their claim to republican liberty 
on such a past as that of Rome ? The disturbances connected 
with Tivoli grew into a civic revolution. How it happened — at 
what moment the new republican cry began to blend with the 
familiar shouts of rival factions — is unknown to us, owing to 
the obscurity of the annals. All that is recorded is, that at a 
given moment the indignant Romans hastened to the Capitol 
and revived the Senate. 

The peculiar social conditions of civic Rome were mainly 
responsible for the unique character of the republican movement. 
For, unlike the Tuscan and Lombard cities, the burgher class 
had hitherto been entirely insignificant in Rome. All the civic 
power, as well as the delegated authority of the Pope, was in 
the hands of the aristocracy, the consuls of the city, and the 
capitani of the campagna. The ordinary citizen had no political 
status other than that which he derived from his place in the 
military organisation. The disabilities of the burgher class 
were shared by the lesser nobility, and, as in England, the two 
classes, socially distinct, came more and more to amalgamate 
their political interests. Just at the moment of crisis, in 
September 1143, Pope Innocent died, and was succeeded by a 
pupil of Abelard, Celestine II., who reigned only a few months. 
His successor, Lucius II., tried in vain, with the help of Roger of 
Sicily, to stem the tide of Republicanism. He appealed to the 
uncrowned Emperor Conrad of Franconia, who had succeeded 
his rival, Lothair, in 1138, but the response was non-committal 
and unsatisfactory. Conrad sympathised with Lucius, but he 
had no time or energy to spare for Italy at the moment. In 
spite of his lukewarmness, Lucius laid siege to the Capitol, but 
a blow on the head from a falling stone cut short his enterprising 
career, and left his cause in the hands of a weak and saintly 
disciple of Bernard of Clairvaux. The election of the monk 



THE EEPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 145 

Eugenius III. (1145-1153) was the unaccountable effect of St. 
Bernard's influence, but even his patron trembled for his cause 
when he heard of his appointment. 

Eugenius was consecrated at Farfa, where he collected a 
contingent of vassals to march against Rome. But he was 
half-hearted, and after excommunicating Jordan Pierleoni, who 
had been elected Patricius of the Senate, the popular party- 
brought him to terms. At Christmas, 1145, he signed a treaty 
which pledged him to recognise the constitution, on condition 
that the Patricius was removed and the Prefect replaced. The 
Senate was to receive investiture from the Pope, and to rule in 
accordance with the constitution recently drawn up. As far as 
a paper constitution can go, the scheme of 1145 was not without 
its merits, and it seemed as if a modus vivendi for the Pope and 
the Senate had been found. But the situation was really im- 
possible, for Papal and Communal government were not merely 
co-ordinate systems ; they were also antagonistic, and it was 
inconceivable that they could coexist while neither proposed 
to give place to the other. The old and unworthy jealousy of 
Rome for the town of Tivoli still smouldered, and Eugenius 
failed to satisfy it by the destruction of the city walls. On the 
other hand, the partisans of the Pope, the nobles and the 
clergy, hated the Senate, and jeered at the forms of republican 
government. Eugenius was ultimately driven to escape to 
France. 

At the same moment, Arnold of Brescia appeared in Rome, 
and began to preach his version of the doctrines of Abelard. 
The moment was felicitous : his preaching caught the ear of 
Rome, and his words were quoted as oracles. Among his enemies 
Arnold was already a marked man. He had been condemned 
by the Lateran Synod of 1139 for inciting the opposition to the 
Bishop of his own city. He had won notoriety by supporting 
Abelard at Sens in his scholastic tournament against the world- 
famed Bernard. From that moment the hostility of the saint 
of Clairvaux dogged the impetuous Arnold with relentless per- 
sistence. He was first confined to a monastery, and on his 
release he was expelled from Paris. He was hunted out of 
Zurich which for a time gave him refuge, and Cardinal Guido 
of Bohemia was warned against him in the strongest terms. 
" Arnold of Brescia, whose speech is honey but whose teaching 
is poison, who bears the head of a dove but the sting of a 
serpent, whom Brescia drove forth, who is abhorred by Rome, 
banished by France, denounced by Germany, and whom Italy 
refuses to receive, is, it is said, with you; take care that he 

10 



146 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

does not injure the respect due to your office: to favour him 
means opposition to the commands of the Pope and of God. 

This is St. Bernard's description of the refugee, who appeared 
in Rome with dramatic suddenness as the apostle of the re- 
publican movement. In spite of a certain semblance of order 
and machinery, the Roman democracy, as he found it, was chaotic 
and disunited, pressing blindly towards an unforeseen goal, and 
entirely lacking in consistency and organisation. It was fore- 
doomed to failure by its association with the dead past : founded 
on a ruin, and shaped on an imaginary prototype, it was at the 
best a fantastic castle in the air. Arnold of Brescia laid his 
finger on the sentimentality which underlay the movement and 
diverted it into the definite channel of his own particular creed. 
He seized upon the popular resentment of the papal policy, and 
used it as a brief against the Gregorian hierarchy. He preached 
against temporal power in all its forms : the clergy were all to 
be poor — all to be equal ; the Church was to divest herself both 
of territorial and of political rights and interests. 

In 1148 Eugenius came back to Italy and excommunicated 
Arnold. In retaliation, the Romans, turning a deaf ear to St. 
Bernard's exhortations, appealed to Conrad, but they were no 
more successful in that quarter than the Pope had been. Conrad 
was not statesman enough to realise that, as arbiter between the 
two parties, he was master of the situation. He allowed him- 
self to be detained in Germany till 1151, when his death saved 
him the trouble of making up his mind. He was succeeded by 
his greater brother, Frederick, whose accession was hailed with 
delight by the Commune. But the Romans were doomed to dis- 
appointment. With a strange mental confusion between the 
catchwords of Csesarean despotism and civic democracy, they 
informed Frederick that he was the fountain of law and the 
supreme lawgiver, but he must be careful not to overlook the 
fact that his power emanated from the Roman people and their 
representative, the Senate. Frederick, in reply, laughed at the 
pretensions of the Senate and made a treaty with Eugenius, 
promising to maintain the Dominium Temporale in return for 
his Imperial Coronation. In the same year (1153) Eugenius III. 
died at Tivoli, leaving the pontificate to Anastasius IV., who 
lived peaceably with the Senate for a few months, then followed 
his predecessor to the grave. 

The pontificate which followed restored to papal history the 
lustre and distinction which the preceding generation had lacked. 
In Hadrian IV. we have a master-mind once more at the head 
of affairs. England has every reason to be proud of the solitary 



THE KEPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 147 

English Pope : his sanity, his inborn ruling instinct, and his 
robust methods in diplomacy stamp him as the traditional 
Englishman of the best type. And yet, as an individual, 
Hadrian owed very little to his native land. The son of a poor 
priest at St. Albans, Nicholas Breakspere left home in his boy- 
hood, and begged his way to France, where he eventually became 
Prior of St. Rufus' near Aries. He is described as attractive, 
cultured, and eloquent, evidently one born for success without 
much struggle in attaining it. 

As Pope, Hadrian abandoned the policy of compromise with 
the Senate. He saw at once that the hollow friendship between 
irreconcilables was not worth the cost of preserving it. He 
therefore appealed to Frederick for the expulsion of Arnold of 
Brescia, not as a suppliant, but as one who claimed the fulfil- 
ment of an undisputed obligation. The Commune, in retalia- 
tion, appealed to William of Sicily, who ravaged Benevento and 
Latium in the name of the anti-clerical party. The assassina- 
tion of a Cardinal in the Via Sacra gave Hadrian the opportunity 
for which he had been waiting. He suddenly paralysed the 
forces of democracy by laying the city under an interdict. 
Easter was approaching, and the suspension of the Sacraments 
produced a panic which swept the Republican movement away. 
When the fourth day of the Holy Week passed without Mass, 
the people rose against the Senate in a frenzy of religious 
hatred. Hadrian refused to move until they went one step 
further, and only after the banishment of Arnold of Brescia, 
after nine years of leadership in the city, was the dreaded 
interdict removed. 

Thus, in 1155, when Frederick Hohenstaufen set out for his 
first expedition to Rome, Hadrian IV. seemed to be in a strong 
position. It was well for the Papacy that it was so, for the 
situation showed clear signs of trouble to come. Frederick 
Barbarossa, the hero of German history, was the strongest of the 
great Emperors. His vision of the Empire was as lofty as Hilde- 
brand's conception of the Papacy : he was mighty in war and 
preeminent in leadership. His first meeting with Hadrian in- 
dicated the attitude which he intended to adopt towards the 
Papacy. He came to Nepi, swearing to keep the peace newly 
ratified at Constance. He surrendered Arnold of Brescia who 
had fled to him for protection. But he withheld the customary 
act of homage which his predecessors had never failed to yield ; 
he would confer benefits on the Pope, but he would not hold 
his stirrup ; he would embrace him as Father in God, but he 
would not serve him as his man. The consternation which 



148 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

this attitude produced among his followers obliged him after- 
wards to submit, but the incident does not lose its significance 
thereby. 

At Sutri Frederick was met by the envoys of the Republic, 
which was determined to die hard. The Emperor received their 
loyal protests with cold contempt, and answered their pompous 
eloquence with curt commonsense. Otto of Freising gives the 
substance of Frederick's speech : " Wilt thou know where the 
ancient glory of thy Rome, the dignified severity of thy Senate, 
the valiant chastity of knighthood, the tactics of the camp and 
invincible military courage have gone? All are now found 
among us Germans ; all have been transmitted to us with the 
Empire. We are thy consuls, with us is thy Senate ; thy legions 
are here." It needed only Frederick's occupation of the Leonina 
and his Coronation in June of the same year to revive the dying 
flame of the democratic movement. Roused to fury by their 
exclusion from the ceremony in St. Peter's, the Roman mob 
attacked the Imperial camp, possibly with the hope of releasing 
their hero Arnold from the Emperor's custody. All day long 
the struggle lasted on the bridge of St. Angelo, and the vigour of 
the Republic requires no stronger proof than is afforded by its 
spirited defence, which finally forced Frederick to retire without 
so much as entering the city proper. The victory had not been 
won without cost. A thousand Romans had been killed or 
drowned, and two hundred more were prisoners in the Imperial 
camp. The Pope pleaded for their release, but their fellow- 
citizens refused to abandon the struggle. Victory cost them 
also the life of Arnold of Brescia. His execution darkens the 
career of Frederick Barbarossa, but it is neither remarkable 
nor without justification. While Arnold lived the spirit of 
Roman democracy had its expression in his winged words, and 
gained impetus from the force of his personality. With him 
died the Roman Republic, with all its pathetic aspirations, its 
ludicrous pretension, and its genuine seeking after progress. 
An estimate of Arnold of Brescia must necessarily be compara- 
tive. He is the first of the series of hero-rebels who have 
sacrificed their lives for the freedom of Italy. As such he forms 
a connecting link between the old and the new — not, like Hilde- 
brand, between the two eras of the Middle Ages, but between 
the ancient and modern world. In one aspect, he is the pro- 
duct of the Investiture struggle — the opponent of hierarchical 
power — and in another, he is the forerunner of modern Italy. In 
many respects he compares favourably with those who took up 
the cause in later generations. He was more sane than Savona- 



THE EEPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 149 

rola, more patriotic than Rienzi, and broader and clearer in his 
aims than Porcaro. There was real ground for the instinct 
which coupled his name with the liberal movement of 1862 — 

Viva il papa, non re ! 
Viva Arnoldo da Brescia, 
Viva il Clero liberale ! 1 

By the death of its leading spirit the Roman Republic was 
crushed, never to be revived with the same loftiness of purpose 
or the same purity of aim. Before long Frederick had reason to 
repent of his victory : in the spirit of Roman freedom he had 
overthrown the enemy of the Pope rather than his own. He 
had been fighting the battles of the Papacy as surely as Pepin 
or Charles, with much less advantage to himself. Moreover, his 
campaign in Italy had been peculiarly abortive : after wander- 
ing aimlessly in the south, reclaiming the allegiance of the 
Campagna, the ravages of fever caused him to hurry north, 
without striking a blow against Sicily or retaliating on Rome. 
He took leave of Hadrian at Tivoli, leaving the Roman prisoners 
in his hands, with the understanding that the Pope should com- 
plete the campaign in their joint interests against William of 
Sicily. But Hadrian was not the man to sacrifice the Papacy in 
the interests of the Empire, and as soon as Frederick was out of 
sight, he showed his intention to play his own hand. After a 
vain endeavour to stir up a revolt against William in Apulia, he 
first offended Frederick by allying himself with the Greeks, in 
contradiction of the terms of the Treaty of Constance ; he then 
further roused the Imperial indignation by coming to terms with 
the Duke of Sicily, and investing him with Sicily, Apulia and 
Capua as fiefs of the Papacy. The alliance with William was 
the stepping-stone to peace with Rome : what remained of the 
Republican party was won over by the gold and the threats of 
Sicily — a further cause of irritation to Frederick, who resented 
his own exclusion from the terms of the peace. 

There were further causes which contributed to the accumu- 
lation of grievances. The various points at issue concerning 
Matilda's legacy were still unsettled : the Investiture contest had 
left many debateable problems behind it. The alliance with 
Sicily had infringed Imperial rights : the peace wifch Rome was, 
in some unknown particulars one-sided. There was, moreover, 
the eternal and inevitable antagonism between a strong Emperor 
and a strong Pope, and the conflicting absolutism of the two 

1 Greg., vol. iv., part ii, 



150 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

theories which they represented. But the immediate cause of 
dispute was a verbal indiscretion in a letter of protest from 
Hadrian, occasioned by the robbery of a Swedish Bishop by 
some Burgundian knights. The Pope wrote a strong document, 
reminding Frederick that he owed his Empire to the Papacy, and 
making use in an unguarded moment of the technical word, 
" Beneficium," or fief, to define the position in which the Em- 
pire stood to the Papacy. The Cardinal legates, who bore the 
document, narrowly escaped death, and Cardinal Roland — the 
future Alexander III. — fearlessly undertook its defence, asking 
with poignant logic " If not from the Pope, from whom does he 
(the Emperor) hold his Empire ? " The answer, expressed in an 
indignant Imperial manifesto, was — " From God alone our king- 
dom and Empire emanates ". The German party among the 
Cardinals forced Hadrian to apologise, and a subsequent letter 
explained that the word " Beneficium " had been used in a 
general and not a legal sense. But it was too late, for Fred- 
erick had meanwhile prepared an expedition against Italy, and 
Milan had already surrendered. At the Diet of Roncaglia in 
1158 the jurists of Bologna defined the Imperial power in terms 
of Justinian absolutism, which caused the towns and the Popes 
to draw together in resistance. Their alliance was still further 
cemented by the attempt of Frederick to put juridical theory 
into practice in demanding feudal dues from the whole of Italy. 
Loud was the outcry throughout the land, and loudest was the 
remonstrance of the Pope, who pleaded for ecclesiastical liberty 
in all secular as well as religious things. Hadrian realised that 
all the results of Hildebrand's efforts were at stake, and his un- 
compromising attitude of resistance does credit to his character 
and statesmanship. But in focussing the quarrel on the ques- 
tion of temporal power, he unconsciously suggested an alliance 
between the Imperial party and the survivors of the Republican 
movement. Now was the moment for Frederick to regret the 
execution of the great republican, and when he sought for 
counter-arguments to hurl against the papal protest, he found 
them in the words of Arnold of Brescia. When he announced 
that all Church property was the gift of kings, and that Bishops 
owed feudal obligations like other vassals, the Arnoldists ap- 
plauded him. In answer to the Pope's claim to have sole 
authority in the city of Rome, Frederick replied : " Since by 
the will of God, I am and call myself Roman Emperor, I should 
only bear an unmeaning title did I allow the sovereignty over the 
city of Rome to pass out of my hands ". His answer found an 
echo in the Senate, which sprang to life again at the revival of 



! 



THE KEPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 151 

its doctrines. Consequently, the year 1159 saw an alliance 
between the Emperor and the Romans, who had stood face to 
face in implacable hostility, across the dead body of Arnold, 
less than four years before. 

Hadrian was spared the necessity of confronting the new 
situation, for he died soon after the alliance was formed. His 
failure to complete the destruction of the Senate testifies rather 
to the surprising stability of the Republican movement than to 
the inadequacy of his methods. He had steered the papal for- 
tunes faithfully and skilfully through a crisis, and unlike other 
men who won their way to the Papacy from the lowest rank of 
society he spent himself as Pope in disinterested self-sacrifice. 
In fortifying papal cities and in patronising the provincial no- 
bility he had laboured for the future, and his plaint, which is 
recorded by his fellow-Englishman, John of Salisbury, is a 
genuine piece of autobiography : " Oh that I had never left my 
native land England, or the convent of St. Rufus. Is there else- 
where in the world a man so miserable as the Pope ? I have 
found so much hardship on the papal throne that all the bitter- 
ness of my past life seems sweet in comparison." 

The death of Hadrian was followed by a schism, with its 
usual undignified accompaniments. The first Pope to be pro- 
claimed was Roland of Sienna, who as Alexander III. stands out 
among mediaeval Popes as one of the group upon whom the 
mantle of Gregory VII. had fallen. The pontifical robe was 
literally torn from his shoulders by Cardinal Octavian, who was 
in turn divested of it by a supporter of Roland's. Another 
mantle was, however, produced by Octavian's chaplain, and the 
would-be Pope hurriedly decked himself with it, spoiling its 
solemn effect, however, by putting it on inside out. Cardinal 
Octavian, of the House of Crescentius, was the head of the 
German party in Rome, and therefore sure of Frederick's 
support. Moreover, he was good-looking, generous, and popular 
with the lower clergy and the democracy. But he was over- 
shadowed by the higher qualities of his rival, who had on his 
side the allegiance of the higher clergy, and the alliance of the 
Lombard towns and of Sicily. Roland was consecrated Alexander 
III. at Ninfa in September, 1159, and in October, Octavian took 
the name of Victor IV. at the adjacent monastery of Farfa. In 
1160, Frederick, as it was expected, confirmed Victor IV at the 
Council of Pavia. Alexander, from his headquarters at Anagni, 
declared war in the traditional manner by excommunicating 
both the Emperor and the Pope of his choice. 

But neither Frederick nor Victor was seriously affected by 



152 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

the fulmination. The Emperor was engaged in his momentous 
campaign against the Lombard cities, and his protege* was with 
him. In their absence Alexander managed to gain a strong 
position in the south and the elements of a party in Rome. But 
Frederick's victories of 1161 turned the tide, and in January, 
1162, Alexander was obliged to turn to the last resort of a 
harassed pontiff — flight to France. Frederick meanwhile com- 
pleted his Lombard conquests by the destruction of Milan, and 
carried Victor IV. with him to Germany. But Victor was a 
failure in Germany, his southern graces failed to charm the 
Teutonic people or to compensate for the weakness of his case. 
Finding him useless, Frederick sent him back to Italy with 
Rainold of Cologne as an escort. Soon after his return, he died 
and was succeeded as anti-pope by Paschalis III., the nominee 
of Rainold. The part of anti-pope was a difficult one to play, 
and it was very seldom filled conspicuously. The career of 
Paschalis III. was as abortive as that of his predecessor Victor 
and his successor Callixtus. The energy of Alexander stands 
out in sharp contrast to the inefficiency of his rivals. Rome 
gradually veered round again, and in 1165 the position of 
Alexander seemed assured. But early in the next year, the 
news of a great German victory at Monte Porzio revived the 
consternation in the city. This time it was no dilatory skirmish, 
but a serious German invasion. At the news of Frederick's 
advance on the city, the Pope wept and took refuge in the 
Colosseum. A successful attack on St. Peter's brought the 
Romans to terms with Frederick. The Senate had not forgotten 
the Emperor's former goodwill towards the republican party and 
thankfully accepted Imperial investiture. Alexander, finding 
himself faced by the same combination which had overwhelmed 
Hadrian, fled for his life. He was last seen at Circe in the 
disguise of a pilgrim, whence he fled to Benevento and after- 
wards to Tusculum. 

Everything seemed to lie at the mercy of Barbarossa, but 
with dramatic suddenness, which is characteristic of the times, 
the situation was reversed by an epidemic of malaria. The 
heroes of the invincible army were struck down with terrible 
rapidity, and Rome itself was decimated. Thomas of Canterbury, 
now the foremost man in England, wrote to congratulate 
Alexander on "the destruction of Sennacherib's host". But 
with wonderful tenacity, Frederick resolutely prolonged his 
campaign in the north. In spite of the Emperor's successes 
against the cities, the wisdom of Alexander held fast to the 
alliance of the Papacy with the spirit of civic freedom, It was 



THE EEPUBLICAN MOVEMENT 153 

a sure path to victory, for it was based on the principle to which, 
more than to any other, the Papacy has owed its stability. 
Emancipation was the keynote of the new age — the idea in the 
air, with the inevitable sanction of the future. To identify it 
with the papal fortunes — to capture it, and adapt it to the papal 
idea — was the policy of Alexander, in which he was followed by 
all the successful Popes of all the ages. It often demanded an 
infinity of patience, for the forces of established custom die 
hard, and the new idea wins its way very slowly. Alexander 
had to watch the hero-Emperor win his cycle of victories before 
the great defeat of Legnano assured for ever the freedom of the 
Lombard cities. 

Meanwhile, Alexander had wandered from place to place in 
the south, reaping some advantages, but on the whole playing an 
apparently losing game. For the first time since the days of 
St. Gregory, affairs connected with England appear in the fore- 
front of papal policy. The quarrel between Henry II. and 
Thomas Becket was now at its height, and the gold of the royal 
coffers was poured into Rome in the vain hope of conciliating the 
Pope. Harassed as he was on all sides, Alexander refused for a 
moment to lower his standard to meet Henry's convenience. He 
recognised in the English King an antagonist who could conceiv- 
ably be crushed at a blow, but never bent from his purpose by 
conciliatory methods. When in 1170 he was at Tusculum, hard 
pressed by the Emperor's vicegerent, Christian of Mainz, he heard 
of the murder of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. The effect of 
the English King's act of sacrilege grew more sharply defined 
when the next phase of the contest began. At the moment, 
Alexander bewailed the loss of a trusty servant without realising 
that the influence of Thomas of Canterbury was greater in his 
" martyrdom " than in his life. Every pilgrim who took the road 
through the Kentish byways, "the holy blissful martyr for to 
seek," in the course of the next three hundred years, recalled the 
iniquity and the humiliation of the English King who had dared 
to oppose the will of St. Peter. 

The victory of Legnano was sealed by the peace of Venice. 
The final settlement was, however, preceded by a secret treaty, 
framed at Anagni, between the Pope and the Emperor, in which 
the Emperor undertook to concede all the privileges which he had 
denied to Hadrian in return for the removal of the ban. The 
allied cities had good reason to suspect treachery, but Alexander 
kept faith with them at Venice, where the envoys of the cities 
appeared for the first time beside the Pope and the Emperor, at 
the first international Congress of European history. But the 



154 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Peace of Venice was, of course, the triumph of Alexander. Calixtus 
was deposed, and the Patrimony restored. Frederick's claims 
were recognised in Spoleto, Ancona, and Romagna, and the cities 
were granted a six years' truce, during which their future inde- 
pendence was granted. 

What had become of the Roman Republic ? A clause in the 
treaty, of little apparent importance, gave it its coup de grace. 
Frederick abandoned his claim to appoint the city Prefect and thus 
left the Pope without a rival in his sovereignty in the city. The 
Senate could not stand alone ; its independent power had fallen 
with Arnold of Brescia ; after the peace of Venice it ceased to be 
more than one of the elements of disorder of which the life of 
civic Rome was composed. We are reminded of its existence in 
the survival of strange decorative offices in the pageantry of the 
Renaissance, and twice again the cry of liberty is heard above 
the chants of the clergy and the war-cries of the noble factions, 
though never with the same ring of sincerity and strength. 
Roman democracy was a lost ideal and civic freedom was never 
attained ; but the Papacy lost as much as it gained from its vic- 
tory in the struggle against a spirit which once was real and a 
cause which was not ignoble. 



CHAPTER XV 

CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONARCHY: THE EPOCH OF 
INNOCENT HL, a.d. 1179-1217 

IN spite of the Peace of Venice, the Papacy was still weak 
during the last years of Alexander III. The Rome to 
which he returned in triumph in 1179 showed a bewildering 
contempt for the settlement of the Emperor, the Pope, and the 
cities. The Landgraves of Viterbo refused to abide by the 
Emperor's decision, and created a new anti-pope in spite of him. 
The Lateran Council of 1179 confirmed the freedom of the 
Church, but until his death in 1181, Alexander was absorbed in 
petty wars in the ecclesiastical territory. His death did not 
improve matters. He was succeeded by three insignificant 
Popes, who lived and died in exile. Lucius III. (1181-1185) 
endured the hostility of the Romans, and called in Christian of 
Mainz to deliver Tusculum, which was the object of attack. 
The warrior-Archbishop died like a hero before the walls of 
Tusculum, and Lucius fled to Frederick at Verona. This, how- 
ever, did not mend his fortunes, for he quarrelled with Barbarossa 
over the question of his son's coronation, and died in the hostile 
Emperor's camp. Urban III. (1185-1187) was equally unfor- 
tunate ; he stayed at Verona, and continued to quarrel with 
Frederick — a quarrel which gained added bitterness when the 
Emperor married his son Henry to Constance, the heiress of 
Sicily. This was an intolerable blow to the Papacy, for the 
popes had grown accustomed to using Sicily as a buffer between 
the Papacy and the Empire. Urban therefore refused to crown 
Henry, who was promptly sent against Rome by his father. 

In 1187 came the news of the recapture of Jerusalem, which 
hai been liberated by the first Crusaders under Urban II. At 
the same moment, Urban III. died and was succeeded by the old 
and equable Gregory VIII. From that moment the eyes of 
Christendom turned once more towards the East. Gregory VIII. 
thought of nothing else than the recapture of Jerusalem, and 
with that end in view he patched up a peace with Henry. His 
successor, Clement III., broke through the fatal spell of weakness 

155 



156 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

by which the Papacy had been overcast. He was a man of 
energy and decision ; he saw that the sacrifice of Tusculum was 
necessary to the restoration of peace with Rome, and he did not 
hesitate to carry it through, together with the surrender of many 
papal privileges which weaker Popes had struggled to retain. 
The rest of his energies were devoted to the new crusade, which 
was planned on a larger and more splendid scale than the two 
earlier expeditions. It was the heyday of chivalry and at the head 
of the enterprise were three of the most conspicuous of mediaeval 
heroes, Frederick Barbarossa, Richard Cceur de Lion, and Philip 
Augustus. But the prestige of the Papacy was far less marked 
than in the time of Urban II. Richard of England, during his 
six months' visit to Tancred of Sicily, refused to visit Rome on 
the ground that there was nothing to be found there but avarice 
and corruption. 

In June, 1190, came the news of the death of Frederick on 
his way to Palestine. The hero-Emperor had been hated in 
Italy as enthusiastically as he was idolised in Germany. And 
yet Italian history owes more to his hostility than to the benefits 
conferred by friendly Emperors, for his wars against the Northern 
cities had stimulated their freedom and endowed them with a 
stability which is unparalleled in European history. 

The son of Frederick was a lesser man than his father, ex- 
celling him in barbarity and obstinacy, and substituting a 
cold and cruel daring for the splendid military qualities of 
Barbarossa. Immediately on his accession, Henry set out for 
Rome, but between him and the new Pope strained relations had 
already arisen. Celestine III., who succeeded Clement in 1191, 
proved no match for the cunning of the Emperor-elect. More- 
over, he had given Henry a grievance by confirming the usurper 
Tancred in the kingdom of Sicily, to which Henry's wife was 
the legitimate claimant. Celestine, therefore, awaited in trepi- 
dation Henry's arrival in Rome, and delayed his own consecra- 
tion in the hope of postponing the coronation until a more 
favourable moment. This manoeuvre was, however, frustrated by 
Henry's skill in ingratiating himself with the Roman people, at 
the expense of the scapegoat city of Tusculum. Urged by the 
Senate, the Pope was obliged to hurry on both the ceremonies ; 
two days after Henry's consecration, Tusculum, the home of the 
Catos, and the cradle of the Theophylacts, was razed to the 
ground. 

The reign of Henry VI. was fraught with evil for the Papacy. 
The Emperor's successes against Tancred revived the night- 
mare of union between Germany and Sicily. Things were no 



CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONAECHY 157 

better within the Patrimony. Henry sprinkled his German 
officials throughout Italy and carved duchies for his followers 
without scruple or regard for the Pope. In Rome itself, two 
quasi-popular revolutions in 1191 and 1197 changed the form of 
the Senate first into a Presidency under a Summus Senator, and 
afterwards into an oligarchy composed of fifty, six captains. 
Celestine was old and weary, and Henry's barbarous Sicilian 
victories in 1196 closed his days in tragedy. The most unat- 
tractive of mediaeval Emperors died in 1197, followed to the 
grave within a few months by the Pope whom he had many 
times wronged. 

With the death of Celestine III. papal history enters on its 
second brilliant epoch of ascendancy through the dominating 
qualities of an outstanding personality. The talents of Innocent 
III. are only surpassed among the makers of the Papacy by the 
genius of Gregory VII., and judged by the standard of actual 
achievement the pontificate of Innocent stands alone. He 
found the Papacy in 1198 weak and despised, with nothing but a 
magnificent tradition and the memory of great moments in the 
past to recall the enthusiasm of Christendom for the unity of the 
spiritual Empire. By the end of his pontificate he had restored 
the papal power to its utmost limits, and he left it organised, 
legalised, controlling and controlled, to endure until a third 
great name should stand like a sentinel between its culmination 
and decline. 

Innocent was thirty-seven years old when as Cardinal Lothar 
he became a candidate for the Papacy. He belonged to the im- 
portant family of the Dei Conti, and inherited, in addition to 
the influence of an ancient ruling family, the feuds and tradi- 
tions characteristic of the Roman nobility. He had been 
brought up under the influence of the great legal revival, and 
his education in Paris and Bologna had given him the best 
possible preparation for the special work which it was his as 
Pope to accomplish. He started with three qualities in common 
with Hildebrand, with whom it is natural to compare him : his 
ambition, his energy, and his faith in his ideal. The cause of 
his greater immediate success, and also of the inferior place 
which he holds in world-history, was his more limited vision. 
His theories were not less absolute than those of Hildebrand, 
but he showed more prudence and diplomacy in working them 
out. He could not help detecting the pitfalls and ambushes 
which Hildebrand's self-confidence would have overridden ; his 
activities were therefore more circumscribed. When he entered 
on his great task, he was ardent with the disciplined enthusiasm 



158 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of a man at his best age. He began by setting his house in order ; 
he made the city Prefect subject to himself, and thus extin- 
guished what remained of the Imperial power in Rome. He 
proceeded to deal with the Senate, persuading the existing 
Summus Senator to retire, and arrogating to himself the power 
of choosing a new one by means of a self- chosen elector. Not 
satisfied with this, he took away one of its most important 
functions, the appointment of the judges, whom he replaced by 
papal delegates. 

Beyond the confines of Rome lay the vague and rather 
elastic patrimony which Henry VI. had feudalised and carved 
up into German dukedoms. In the recovery of the papal terri- 
tories, national instinct collaborated with Innocent's efforts. 
On Henry's death, many of them fell back, naturally, to their 
former overlord. Tuscany, Ancona and Ravenna, which had 
been monopolised by Henry's brother Philip and his lieutenant 
Markwald, surrendered themselves instantly, and a Tuscan 
Federation supported him in the reduction of the rest. Thus, in 
two years, Innocent had restored the patrimony to the limits of 
Pepin's donation, and the only temporal problem which still re- 
mained unsolved was that of Rome itself. 

Although Rome and the idea of Rome is the keynote of 
medisevalism, the city itself was conspicuously free from the 
spirit of the Middle Ages. As the nominal capital of Christen- 
dom, Rome plays the smallest possible part in the movements 
which convulsed mediaeval Europe. She contributed little or 
nothing to the Crusades, though she reaped from them a harvest 
of profit which practically she seems hardly to have earned. It 
is impossible to trace any definite line of development or any 
steadfastness of aim in the history of mediaeval Rome, because 
she has no civic ideal except that with which the past supplies 
her, and no reconstructive force with which to revivify the old 
order to which she clings. It is this peculiar aimlessness which 
exposed Rome to the ravages of so many political epidemics, 
and which accounts for the prevalence of family feuds — the 
particular evil which confronted Innocent III. The Orsini re- 
lations of the late Pope were hostile to the Conti, the family of 
Innocent III. Innocent was accused of nepotism because he 
made over to his brother Richard a fortress which he had taken 
from the Orsini, and the Poli came forward to oppose him. The 
feud was taken up by the populace, which in spite of the move- 
ments of the twelfth century still retained its character as the 
" rabble of plebs.". A new popular Senate was formed under the 
title of the " Good men of the Commune ". Towers were raised 






CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONAECHY 159 

and projectiles flew: Innocent fled, returned again, and finally- 
gained by bribery the victory which a three years' struggle had 
failed to secure. 

Meanwhile, in Sicily, events had occurred of the greatest 
importance to the future of the Empire. A rebellion against 
Constance and her infant son led to an offer of protection from 
Innocent, at the cost of the investiture of the kingdom. Soon 
after, in 1198, Constance died, leaving the four-year-old Frederick 
in the guardianship of the Pope. Innocent accepted the re- 
sponsibilities of the Regency without counting the cost, and 
finding the turbulence of his ward's subjects too difficult a 
problem to be dealt with at a distance, he accepted the services 
of the adventurer, Walter of Brienne. Walter was a knight 
errant of a type which was prevalent in the thirteenth century. 
He had married Tancred's daughter, and was thus able to put 
forward a claim to Sicily through the old Norman line. 
Innocent, in admitting his claim, certainly overlooked the in- 
terests of Frederick, but he may have foreseen the greater 
destiny in store for the boy, in which the lesser dignity was 
bound to be merged. 

At the time, however, Frederick remained unthought-of in 
papal tutelage while the great imperial contest which was to 
bring him to his own surged round Otto the Gwelph and 
Philip the Ghibelline. Otto of Bavaria was supported by his 
wife's uncle Richard Coeur de Lion, but the majority of the 
German princes swore allegiance to Philip of Swabia. the brother 
of Henry VI., who had the advantages of the Hohenstaufen 
territories and the friendship of Philip Augustus of France. 
Between these two men, Innocent had to choose, and in 1201, 
he formally ratified the election of Otto. The reasons for his 
choice rested on the balance of advantages to the Papacy. The 
Papacy was naturally anti-Hohenstaufen, for the Hohenstaufen 
aim was to create an hereditary monarchy by means of the re- 
duction of Italy. Moreover, by supporting the weaker candidate 
he was prolonging the contest, and schism in the Empire meant 
advantage to the Papacy. The personalities of the two candi- 
dates inclined Innocent in the same direction. Philip was 
strong and defiant : Otto was weak and submissive. The Capitu- 
lation of Neuss illustrates the supreme importance of papal re- 
cognition to Otto. He was prepared to surrender all right to 
the Exarchate, Pentapolis, Ancona, Spoleto, Matilda's inheri- 
tance, and "all other adjacent territories defined in Privilegia 
since Lewis ". Inoocent's next step is difficult to account for : 
Otto was more than compliant, and Philip actively hostile, and 



160 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

yet the papal policy undoubtedly begins to veer round. A pro- 
pitiatory letter from Philip was received, and in January, 1206, 
Innocent upbraids John of England for not supporting his 
kinsman Otto. In the same year Otto was defeated at Cologne, 
and negotiations were openly carried on between Innocent and 
Philip. In 1207, Philip submitted to the Pope's terms and was 
released from the ban. In 1208 he was King of the Romans, 
and victory seemed all but in his grasp, when he was murdered 
at Bamberg by Otto of Wittelsbach, to whom he had refused his 
daughter in marriage. The tragedy of Philip's death threw 
Innocent back on his previous policy, and in 1209 Otto V. re- 
newed the Treaty of Neuss at Speyer. In this second phase 
Innocent began to make use of his prote'ge* as a means of extort- 
ing further concessions, and the future hostility of the boy 
Frederick hung like a sword over the head of Otto. 

In October, 1209, Otto came to Rome for his coronation, but 
his subjection to the Pope did not increase his popularity in 
Italy, since it made bribery unnecessary, and the coronation 
battle was fiercer than ever in consequence. The coronation 
itself was barren in meaning and abortive in result. Otto had 
signed away all that made the imperium worth striving for, and 
no sooner had he attained it than he realised the anomaly of his 
position. He therefore took the only way of escape, broke the 
treaty, and declared himself a Ghibelline. It was an audacious 
volte-face, but his perjury was thrust upon him with the Empire. 
The Pope on his side had to acknowledge the severity of the 
blow, and in a letter to Philip Augustus the tone in which he 
tells of the events is unusually humble : " It is not without 
shame that I impart to you my fears, for you have often 
warned me ". 

The time was now ripe for the production of Frederick II. 
Otto's position was fairly well established in Italy, but in Ger- 
many he was fast losing ground. At the head of a small force 
Frederick made his way to Germany, where Innocent's emis- 
saries had gone before him to prepare a party. At Bouvines, in 
1214, he met and defeated Otto's army, with Philip Augustus on 
his side and the English against him. In this, his first, enter- 
prise, Frederick was recognised by the world as a young man of 
great promise and energy. In his golden bull of 1213 he pro- 
mised obedience to the Church, liberty of ecclesiastical elections, 
and the right of appeal to Rome, "in consideration for the 
immense and innumerable benefits of his protector and bene- 
factor, Pope Innocent ". He undertook further to cut off Sicily 
in the name of his son as soon as his own coronation was 



CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONAECHY 161 

effected. So far all was well for Innocent and the Papacy ; 
Frederick's attitude was correct and unimpeachable ; he was the 
dutiful son of the Pope in more than name, and the seal of 
success was upon him. But Frederick, the victor of Bouvines, 
had yet to reveal himself as Frederick, the wonder of the world. 

The effect on the Papacy of Innocent's interference in the 
contest for the Empire was to extend and confirm, on the one 
hand, the tradition of the spiritual imperium, and diminish, on 
the other hand, its popularity in Europe. The poems of Walther 
von der Vogelweide, in all their bitterness and sarcasm, indicate 
the feelings of the average German towards the policy of Inno- 
cent. The theory upon which Innocent's policy was grounded 
is still more significant. The new metaphor of the two swords 
supplants the older and less extravagant symbol of the two 
lights in heaven. In the time of Gregory, the Papacy and the 
Empire were said to coexist as distinct powers, the one greater 
and the other less. In the time of Innocent, we read that " the 
Pope has two swords ; he keeps for himself the spiritual sword, 
and gives to the Emperor the temporal one : when he rides his 
white palfrey the Emperor is compelled to hold his stirrup ". 

The Empire, which Innocent regarded as emanating from the 
Papacy, was still in theory world-wide. The temporal sword of 
St. Peter stretched far beyond Italy and Germany to the limits 
of Christendom, and the spiritual relationship in its political 
interpretation implied the vassalage of Europe to the See of 
Rome. Sicily, Denmark, and Sweden had already fallen in. 
Sancho of Portugal renewed to Innocent the homage first ren- 
dered in 1144. Peter of Aragon, in 1204, placed his crown on 
the High Altar of St. Peter's, and received it back attached to 
the condition of tribute. Three years later Poland did the same, 
and three Oriental princes of Armenia, Bulgaria, and Servia fol- 
lowed. In all these cases it is important not to overlook the 
voluntary character of the proffered submission. Emphasis is 
too often laid on Innocent's ambitious exactions, obscuring the 
fact that the nations which submitted gained in return privileges, 
spiritual and political, which amply requited them, in their own 
estimation, for the sacrifice of their independence. The com- 
pliance of the nations was indeed a misfortune in disguise to the 
Papacy ; there is no department of Innocent's policy more im- 
mediately successful and ultimately disastrous than his relations 
with England. 

Originating in a question of ecclesiastical etiquette, the 
comparative rights of two bands of monks to elect an English 
Archbishop, a great personal duel emerged between Innocent 
11 



162 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

and the worst-hated of English kings. The incidents of the 
struggle, and still more, the conditions of its conclusion — too 
familiar to recapitulate here — alienated the heart of a nation 
for ever from its allegiance to the Papacy. England had until 
now retained a singularly pure and loyal attitude towards the 
papal ideal. Mindful of the debt which she owed to Gregory 
the Great, she submitted dutifully to the supremacy, in the 
belief that the regeneration of the world was still its animating 
impulse. Protestantism was never a part of the English char- 
acter. The hostility to papal exactions, which is henceforth 
typical of our history, had its origin in the shock of contrast 
between the Catholic ideal, as it was possible to conceive it in 
a remote island kingdom, and the temporal policy which the 
mediaeval popes found it necessary to pursue. Thus England 
had eagerly taken up the cause of reform, and the English kings 
had been among the first to respond to the appeal of the Crusades, 
both of which movements had emanated from the Papacy. 
Innocent's great mistake was that he failed to read the English 
character or to take the measure of King John. The appoint- 
ment of Stephen Langton, excellent in itself, was dearly bought 
by the Interdict. John's submission and humiliation in 1213 
was a still more questionable victory. In pronouncing England 
to be a fief of the Papacy, Innocent ignored the constitutional 
progress which the nation had made under the Norman kings ; 
he forgot that the privileges which Henry II. had taught the 
nation to cherish had placed England on a different footing from 
Poland and Armenia. Thus, Innocent was soon to discover that 
the humiliation of King John had not brought England low. At 
Runnymede, as at Canossa, the nobility, representing the nation, 
recoiled from the abasement of the King, and dissociated itself 
from the consequences of it. The essence of the tragedy, from 
the papal point of view, lay in the fact that in the great consti- 
tutional drama of Magna Carta, the Pope stood side by side with 
John and his tyranny in the face of the charter of liberties, with 
the first great patriot Churchman at its head. Or, in the words 
of Matthew Paris, " The sovereign Pontiff, who ought to be the 
source of sanctity, the mirror of piety, the guardian of justice, 
the defender of truth, protects such a man ! Why does he take 
his part? To engulf the riches of England in the coffers of 
Roman avarice." 

Something of the same lack of imagination characterised 
Innocent's dealings with France. If he had over-estimated 
King John, he certainly under-rated his rival, Philip Augustus. 
But on the whole, he was more successful in his relations with 



CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONAECHY 163 

the greater than with the meaner monarch. In punishing the 
adultery of Philip with the Interdict, Innocent was certainly 
within his rights. Moreover, he succeeded in effecting a re- 
conciliation between the King and his repudiated wife. But in 
affairs of policy, Philip was more resolute than in the moral 
sphere. When Innocent tried to interfere in the first phase of 
his quarrel with King John, he was told to mind his own business, 
for "the Pope has nothing to do with an affair which rests be- 
tween kings". Philip's letter of protest against the Pope's 
alliance with Otto of Brunswick is still more high-handed. " I 
am astonished at your persistence in protecting a prince whose 
family interests make him the enemy of your kingdom. As 
your Holiness knows well, I regard the elevation of this prince 
to whom you attach yourself in so inconsiderate a manner, as a 
disgrace for all Christian kings. If you persist, I shall know how 
to take necessary steps." The implied threat may or may not 
have had something to do with Innocent's change of front in 
1207, but it was undoubtedly the "warning" to which Innocent 
subsequently referred in his appeal for Philip's assistance against 
Otto. 

The ultimate object of Innocent's foreign policy, beyond the 
extension of the prerogative, was the hope of uniting Europe in 
a new Crusade. The project was, however, a failure, the only 
result of which was the conquest of the Eastern Empire, and the 
indefinite postponement of unity between the Eastern and 
Western Churches. Innocent's zeal for the Catholic faith mili- 
tant was not confined to the East. Nearer home the growth of 
heresy was a symptom of a new danger which threatened 
Catholic unity. Against the Albigensian sect of southern France 
the feudal forces of the orthodox north were urged forward by 
papal appeals. The brutality and the terror of the Albigensian 
war burdens the reign of Innocent with an awful responsibility. 
He had called out the passionate force of hatred between north 
and south which reveals itself unexpectedly now and again in 
French history, and he himself recoiled from the consequences. 

The appeal from doctrine to arms was characteristic of 
Innocent. His mind was essentially practical : he chose to 
vindicate the truth on the battle-field rather than in council; 
where others might have used persuasion, Innocent enacted 
laws. The result of this natural bias of his mind, coinciding as 
it did with the epoch of extreme papal accretion, was a tendency 
to define and to increase in defining the theory of spiritual 
power in all its departments. We have seen how this affected 
the political relations of the Papacy towards other powers. Since 



164 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

the Pope had established his claim to be paramount in Europe, 
there could be no more question of the Emperor's right to elect 
him. Since the time of Hildebrand, the Emperor had entirely- 
dropped out of elections, and the Cardinals, to whom the right 
had fallen, had become more and more important. The great 
difficulty of the twelfth century was to secure unanimity among 
them, the lack of which produced serious schisms, such as that 
of Alexander III. and Victor IV., which had lasted 18 years. 
The third Lateran Council of 1179 decided that the unanimity 
of the Cardinals was necessary to election, a canon which pro- 
tracted the elections to an inconceivable length, until the forma- 
tion of the conclave at the Council of Lyons in 1274. Supported 
by the Cardinalate the Papacy was safe from any attempt to 
dispute its independence. Strong at the centre, it could diffuse 
strength in every radius. 

The methods by which the Papacy maintained its sovereignty 
throughout the world owe their origin peculiarly to Innocent the 
Great. His masterly wisdom in promoting the system of central- 
isation and avoiding the dangers of suzerainty was his greatest 
achievement. By innumerable small threads of legislation, 
Rome kept in touch with the farthest provinces of Christendom. 
There was penitentiary reservation for extreme sins : for certain 
offences absolution had to be sought in Rome. The right of 
canonisation was reserved for the Pope under Alexander III. ; 
Innocent extended this to the power of authenticating relics. 
In the time of the Crusades, vows were apt to be made im- 
pulsively and the Cross taken without due thought : exemptions 
and dispensations could only be given by the Pope himself. 
The Pope alone could convoke and dissolve oecumenical councils. 
Appeals to Rome in questions of jurisdiction increased under 
Innocent's encouragement, and became a reproach owing to 
their number and informality. Under Hadrian IV. the right was 
acquired of conferring benefices in foreign countries. It was 
only after a time that this last privilege became an abuse : its 
immediate result was to bring forward good men who would 
otherwise have remained in obscurity, and to counteract the 
influence of the local landlord. In 1245, however, the English 
Bishops complained of the number of Italian clergy in England, 
and ten years later the abuse was removed by Alexander IV. 
who restricted the number of papal benefices to four in each 
chapter. It had already become the custom for a newly con- 
secrated Bishop to make a special journey to Rome, and in the 
time of Innocent these voyages " ad limina " became a fixed 
rule. Nothing could exceed the importance of these personal 



CONSOLIDATION OF PAPAL MONARCHY 165 

interviews in holding the loyalty of national churches to the 
Papacy. It cannot be denied that these provisions dealt a 
severe blow at the power of the Metropolitans, whose authority 
they tended to circumscribe. But the idea of Innocent and 
the other Popes who promoted the policy was in no way hostile ; 
their desire was merely to associate themselves with the national 
authority, and to encourage the Archbishops to regard them- 
selves also as part and parcel of the great world system. This 
they never succeeded in doing. The career of Stephen Langton 
shows how a great Archbishop ranged himself naturally on the 
side of nationality, in the struggle against John, regardless of 
Innocent's championship of the King. 

The framework of the Catholic Church was thus completed, 
and put together by the great lawyer Pope. The spiritual do- 
minion became a perfect legal system. But Innocent's achieve- 
ment did not end here. His work of definition was carried into 
the innermost sanctities of religion. The hidden mysteries of 
the Catholic faith were brought out into the hard daylight, and 
its most transcendental doctrines were defined in the crude ter- 
minology of thirteenth-century reasoning. The word "Tran- 
substantiation" was brought into use for the first time, and 
Communion was no longer given in both kinds. Public penance 
had fallen into disuse, and in its place, Private Confession be- 
came a matter of fixed rule. The Sacraments were expressed 
as rigidly as the Canon law, and the ritual in which they were 
veiled became richer and more mystical, gaining in ceremonial 
dignity what it lost in spontaneity. The danger of all this was 
that it tended towards excessive formality at the expense of 
reality in religion. It is an open question how far defini- 
tion really simplifies the truth, and it is probable that one re- 
sult of Innocent's influence on Catholic doctrine was to take 
away much of that organic vitality which belonged to earlier 
ages. 

The emphasis laid on sacramental teaching by Innocent 
naturally strengthened the principle of authority within the 
Church. It was inevitable that it should go still further. The 
power of the keys had no disciplinary force beyond the pale of 
orthodoxy, and some new method had to be devised for the sal- 
vation of t'ie rebel. One of the principal objects of Innocent's 
great Lateran Council of 1215, at which representatives from all 
the European powers were present, was to provide a remedy for 
the prevention of heresy. The result was that a code of penalties 
was drawn up by Innocent, and the power of enforcing it was 
entrusted to trie bishops and their delegates. This is said to be 



166 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

the origin of the Inquisition, but it would be unfair to ascribe 
to the very moderate code of Innocent the responsibility for the 
excesses of the Holy Office in later ages. 

If the reforms of Innocent tended to ignore the claims of the 
individual, the process was largely counteracted by the new 
development of monasticism, which centres round the names of 
Francis and Dominic. The two saints, animated by a passion of 
human pity, the one for the conscious spiritual needs of the 
world, the other for its unconscious peril of ignorance, gave an 
ideal to their generation which has never faded. The simplicity 
of St. Francis of Assisi pierced beyond the outward splendour of 
the great Church militant, and felt the reproach of the suffering 
and sorrow which it left untouched. The clergy had done what 
they could, but the regulars were aloof and austere, the seculars 
were worldly and rich, and neither of them had much time or 
thought to spare for the individual needs of the poor. It was 
not until the " Poor little man of Assisi " came amongst them as a 
brother that the claims of the defenceless were recognised, apart 
from their function as channels for the virtue of alms-giving. 
What the distress of the poor was to St. Francis, the growth of 
heresy meant to St. Dominic. In his Spanish home he saw men 
hounded and persecuted for error without the opportunity of 
knowing the truth, which the clergy were too ignorant to teach, 
or too mystical to make intelligible to the simple. The founda- 
tion of the Franciscans, in 1209, and of the Dominicans, in 1215, 
sealed the golden age of the mediaeval Church. It is not the 
least of Innocent's titles to greatness that he recognised the 
power of the love of Francis, and the wisdom of Dominic, and 
the need of the world for both. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE CONTEST WITH FREDERICK STUPOR MUNDI 

" rn p-MIE right and power of examining the person elected to 
the kingdom and pretending to the Empire belongs," 

-*" says Innocent, "to ourselves, who anoint, consecrate, 
and crown him." The assertion is made with the assurance of 
absolute power to establish his claim and to accomplish its results. 
Gregory IX. incorporates the words in his digest of canon law, 
grounding it on the historical theory of the translation of the 
Empire, for which Innocent is also responsible. The assertion is 
that the Pope originally took away the Empire from the Greek 
Emperors and gave it to Charles the Frank, and that the authority 
then exercised by Leo the Great was vested in his successors for 
ever. 

This theory of the Translatio was hardly formulated before it 
was challenged by the most remarkable of the champions of the 
Empire. The Papacy had already confronted Emperors who were 
mightier than Frederick II., but none who were more formidable. 
The great Emperors of mediaeval tradition were simple and heroic, 
violent men like Charlemagne, and rugged like Barbarossa. But 
the character of Frederick II. baffled the men of his own day as 
it astonishes the historians of ours. He stands outside the cen- 
turies and defies the categories of type. Every paradox of 
psychology seems to be found in his personality: astoundingly 
modern, and yet superstitious and intolerant ; subtle and cruel, 
but charming and lovable, a despot and a troubadour, a philoso- 
pher and a sensualist. And yet, the whole is something more 
than a medley of inconsistent qualities ; hardly a great man, and 
emphatically not a successful one, the verdict of posterity places 
him beyond the pale of history — essentially Stupor Mundi, the 
Wonder of the World. 

Temperament, dynasty, and political philosophy foredoomed 
Frederick as the last champion of the great mediaeval Empire 
against the Papacy. The struggle did not end with him, but the 
last phase is merely the aftermath of Frederick's contest — the 
epilogue by which the tragedy dies into pathos. Three Popes 

167 



168 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

spent their energies in opposing him, two of whom were consum- 
mate statesmen. To regret that so much energy and power 
should have been expended in a cause which was mainly tem- 
poral is to regret that the thirteenth century Church was 
mediaeval. The Popes fought against Frederick for the theory of 
supremacy, and for the means to enforce it : sometimes exaggera- 
ted into arrogance, and sometimes distorted into greed, the theory 
itself was the indispensable adjunct of mediaeval Catholicism. 

The successor of Innocent was Honorius III., a member of 
the noble House of Savelli, and a man beloved in Rome for his 
goodness. One object and one only lay near to his heart, his 
zeal for the Crusade. Frederick had taken the Cross, but he 
showed no corresponding zeal to fulfil his vow. The truth was 
that the crusading ideal represented the spirit of an age which 
was passing away, and Europe had grown a little tired of it. 
Frederick, moreover, had pressing duties to keep him at home. 
His Sicilian kingdom had fallen into a state of chaos during his 
minority, and the great Hohenstaufen scheme of erecting a strong 
Italian monarchy was already uppermost in his mind. Of this 
monarchy Sicily was to be the base, and the Empire the pretext 
of acquisition. The gentleness of Honorius was already ruffled 
by Frederick's delay in carrying out his vow : he was still further 
irritated by Frederick's importunacy in petitioning for his corona- 
tion, and for the adoption of his son, already King of Sicily, as 
heir to the Empire. Frederick soothed the Pope by a large grant 
of privileges, and renewed the promise that Sicily and Germany 
should never be permanently united. At the same moment, how- 
ever, he secured his son's election to the Empire and wrung from 
Honorius a sanction for his life-possession of Sicily. The Pope 
was not in a position to stand out, owing to the turbulence of 
Rome, and Frederick gracefully atoned by a tactful mediation 
between Honorius and the Romans, which enabled the Pope to 
return with honour to the city. The coronation of Frederick and 
Constance immediately followed, in 1220, "amid universal re- 
joicings," and Frederick renewed his crusading vow for the 
following August. 

Honorius meanwhile was reaping the usual effects of a strong 
pontificate in a series of rebellions in the Patrimony. Troubles 
arose in Spoleto and Ancona, and a more serious outbreak of 
Roman hostility in 1221 centred round the town of Viterbo, 
which Honorius endeavoured to protect from the hostility of the 
Roman Commune. The Pope's suppression of a democratic rising 
in Perugia further enflamed Republican sentiment, and a 
rebellion under Richard Conti drove Honorius once more to 



CONTEST WITH FEEDEKICK STUPOE MUNDI 169 

flight. Whether with or without reason, Honorius kept a 
suspicious eye on Frederick and his constructive work in Sicily, 
and laid many of his troubles at the Emperor's door. But before 
long Frederick gave him real cause for alarm. Having com- 
pleted his work in Sicily, he asserted claims over the cities of 
North Italy, and, goaded further by their resistance, announced 
his determination to claim the whole of Italy as his "inherit- 
ance ". In answer to this challenge, the Lombard League sprang 
to life again in March, 1226. At the same moment John of 
Brienne, the titular King of Jerusalem, appeared before Honorius 
as a plaintiff. The Pope had encouraged the Emperor to marry 
as his second wife John's daughter, Yolande, hoping thereby to 
increase his interest in the fate of Jerusalem. John of Brienne 
now complained with some justification that his son-in-law had 
usurped his title. The last straw was the clash between mon- 
archical and ecclesiastical rights in connection with episcopal 
investiture in Sicily. Honorius, the lover of peace, committed 
himself to war : on a pretext of arbitration he threw in his lot with 
the cities, and by a fortuitous combination of interests the papal 
fortunes were once more united with the forces of independence. 

The death of Honorius III. in March, 1227, saved him from 
the uncongenial enterprise which circumstances had thrust upon 
him. The accession of Gregory IX. hurried events forward with 
sudden rapidity. He was a relation — probably a nephew — of 
Innocent III., brought up under his influence and imbued with 
his tradition. As Cardinal Hugolinus of Ostia he had watched 
with growing irritation the patience and long-suffering of 
Honorius towards the delinquencies of Frederick. His own 
energy swept the situation like a whirlwind after a period of 
sullen stillness. He ordered Frederick instantly to start on his 
Crusade. Frederick was startled into obedience, and set out from 
Brindisi ; but hardly had the Te Deum of his host died away 
than he was back again, pleading the ravages of an epidemic, and 
alleging that he himself had been taken ill at sea. Gregory saw 
through the pretext, which was real, to the professions of regret, 
which were unreal. He recalled the Emperor's action with regard 
to the Lombard cities and the Sicilian bishoprics, and throwing 
off the semblance of a peace from which the substance had long 
since vanished, he excommunicated Frederick at Anagni on 
September 29, 1227. 

Frederick accepted the papal denunciation in the spirit in 
which it was meant, and took up the gage of battle. Among 
his many talents was a masterly power of pleading his own cause. 
His exculpation, addressed to the kings of Europe, justified his 



170 A BHOET HI3TOBY OF THE PAPACY 

return from the Crusade and impeached the absolutism of the 
Pope. Frederick's manifesto was widely advertised, and it was 
hailed with joy on the Capitol. All the factions of anarchy — 
nobles, republicans, and heretics — claimed it as their brief 
against Gregory, whose attempts to establish strong government 
had already made him unpopular. During his absence, a mock 
pope was allowed to sell dispensations to the crusaders on their 
way back from Brindisi. Scandals such as this caused Gregory 
to repeat the anathema in Eome, but he was interrupted by 
Ghibelline insults, and obliged to take refuge at Viterbo. Fred- 
erick's next move was a master-stroke of ingenuity : excom- 
municated as he was, he set out again for the Crusade, and thus 
took the wind out of Gregory's sails. To the astonishment 
of Christendom, Gregory placed every obstacle in his way, and 
finding himself powerless to prevent the expedition, followed it 
out to Jerusalem with his curse. The Knights Templars and 
Hospitallers held aloof from Frederick's Crusade, but the new 
order of Teutonic Knights had followed him. It was unfortun- 
ate for Gregory's position that the expedition was a brilliant 
success. While the Pope was preaching a holy war against him 
in Europe, Frederick reconquered the Holy Land and crowned 
himself King of Jerusalem. He returned and tried to make 
peace ; failing, he turned soon and tried again. Finally, in 1230, 
a flood in Rome, which brought the population in terror to the 
feet of the Pope, made Gregory more amenable, and a one-sided 
peace was vouchsafed to Frederick at San Germano. 

The Crusade of Frederick II. had alienated the world from 
the papal cause. Contemporary authors of England and France 
seemed to think that his excommunication was unjust, and 
that Gregory's action in opposing a Crusade, even if it was under- 
taken by a sinner, was inconsistent with a belief in the expiatory 
power of the Holy Wars. But the real issue at stake between 
Gregory and Frederick was one which could not be realised from 
a distance. The Hohenstaufen ideal of Italian monarchy would 
undoubtedly have enslaved the Papacy and undone the work of 
Hildebrand. The struggle of the Papacy against the Emperors, 
in spite of the unworthiness of many of its incidents, gains in 
dignity and importance when we recall the dangers of the alter- 
native. Had Frederick's ideal been realised, the spiritual power 
would have succumbed; subject Popes would have once more 
ruled the universal Church, and all efforts at reform and re- 
generation would have been dependent on the goodwill of the 
Emperors. 

The peace of San Germano lasted about six years, during 



CONTEST WITH FEEDEEICK STUPOE MUNDI 171 

which the activities of Gregory were monoplised by the troubles 
with Rome. The Popes were always vacillating between severity 
and indulgence in their dealings with the ungrateful city, which 
could neither prosper with nor without them. Gregory first 
bought his way back with doles, and then made himself felt by 
a reign of terror. He was the warm champion of the new 
mendicant orders, and with their assistance he waged relentless 
war on the heretics, who had increased and multiplied during 
his absence. The inquisition proper, with its terrors and its 
fanaticism, originated in the age of Gregory IX., and in Rome no 
clear line was drawn between doctrinal and political heresy. A 
serious rebellion of the Romans in 1234 attracted the attention 
of Europe for the first time to the home government and do- 
mestic difficulties of the Papacy. The centre of attack was 
Viterbo, the Pope's harbour of refuge, and the leader of the 
populace was Luca Savelli of the urban nobility. The country 
nobles were generally loyal to Gregory, and the Emperor, glad 
of an opportunity to improve his relations with him, came to 
his aid. The rebellion of Frederick's eldest son in Lombardy 
was another reason for his anxiety to befriend the Pope. At 
his bidding the princes of Europe looked on the enterprise as a 
Crusade. Raymond of Toulouse and other warriors flocked to 
the papal standard and defeated the Romans at Viterbo. The 
Emperor formed a peace, according to which the Romans lost 
all the privileges they had fought for. 

The Roman rebellion gave Frederick the time which he 
wanted to prepare for the project on which he had staked his 
career, the conquest of Lombardy. He paid a short visit to 
Germany, subdued his son, and married Isobel of England. 
Then he returned to Italy, and on a pretext of punishing the 
Lombard cities for supporting Henry, he prepared an expedition 
for the conquest of Italy, relying mainly for his support on the 
feudal nobles — the " tyrants " of the cities who were the natural 
enemies of the democratic movement. 

Gregory from the first threw himself unreservedly on to the 
side of the cities. The opponent of democratic liberties in 
Rome became the ardent champion of the rights of the free 
cities against Hohenstaufen aggression. He bought his return 
to Rome for £10,000 in 1237, and in November following, he 
heard of Frederick's great victory at Cortenuova. The " Wonder 
of the World " entered Cremona with the pomp of an Oriental 
victor, parading the Carroccio of Milan, drawn by his famous 
white elephant through the streets, with the captive Podesta* of 
the city bound to its mast. The Carroccio, or wagon of Milan, 



172 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

was the paladium of the cities, and what remained of it at the 
end of the revels Frederick characteristically sent to Rome, as 
a delicate insult to the Pope. Gregory did not fail to read the 
message. He encouraged the cities to stand out against Fred- 
erick's demand for unconditional surrender, and actively joined 
in by organising a maritime league. In 1239 he proceeded to ex- 
communicate Frederick, on the groundless pretext that he had 
incited the Romans to revolt. Frederick cleared himself in a 
brilliant speech, which his able chancellor, Peter della Vigna, 
delivered before the Parliament at Padua. He appealed especi- 
ally to the Romans, touching skilfully the chords of flattery 
which never failed to move them. Gregory's vigorous answer 
shows something more than political resentment : " A beast rose 
from the sea filled with names of blasphemy, furnished with the 
claws of the bear, the jaws of a lion, and in body resembling a 
panther". His indictment contains the first definite impeach- 
ment of Frederick's orthodoxy, and raises a question which has 
exercised the minds of all the biographers of this astonishing 
Emperor. Frederick certainly showed a breadth of outlook 
which was far in advance of anything that the thirteenth 
century could conceive. Instead of exterminating his Saracen 
enemies after the capture of Jerusalem, he had made peace 
with them. In Sicily he had not only tolerated a Saracen 
settlement at Lucera, but he had surrounded himself with a 
Saracen body-guard and encouraged Arabic professors in his 
new University of Palermo. The " blasphemies " of Frederick, 
in some cases obviously mis-recorded by ecclesiastical enemies 
and in others liable to double interpretation, give the general 
impression of a man who has outgrown the expression of the 
faith of his age. He is neither irreligious nor defiant, but he 
is goaded into opposition by a sense of the injustice and lack 
of comprehension of his contemporaries. His interest in his 
Saracen subjects, his adoption of their morals, and his meta- 
physical bent were quite enough to give colour to the Pope's 
charge of atheism, which is chiefly important because of its 
effect on the Christian world. The sympathies of Europe — 
particularly of England, according to Matthew Paris — went at 
first with Frederick; other monarchs had been excommuni- 
cated for political causes, and the impression was that Fred- 
erick had suffered unjustly. But the early sympathy for his 
cause was neutralised by the horror of his opinions, and there 
were many who read Gregory's encyclical, believed it, and 
changed their minds. 

In 1240, Frederick definitely set to work to destroy the 



CONTEST WITH FREDERICK STUPOR MUNDI 173 

States of the Church, and his son Enzio, the King of Sardinia, 
was his ablest collaborator. While Ancona and the Maritima 
submitted to Enzio, Frederick marched on Rome and halted at 
Viterbo. The state of things in Rome was a remarkable 
testimony to the courage and splendour of Gregory IX. Under- 
mined with Ghibelline plots and in deadly peril, the city rallied 
round the aged Pope in the moment of crisis : his courage 
recalled their pride, and his dignity inspired their awe. A Pope 
who could calmly organise a procession to St. Peter's with the 
enemy at his gates — who, even at the eleventh hour, when his 
friends were deserting, refused with scorn the overtures of peace 
— was worthy of the loyalty of the city, which hailed him as 
another Leo the Great. Frederick, distant only a two days' 
march, and daily welcoming renegade Gwelfs to his camp — 
among them John Colonna, the mighty Cardinal of San Prassede 
— laughed at the defenceless exposure of Rome. But even he 
realised the change of feeling in Rome as the crisis drew nearer. 
"Ye saints defend Rome, whom the Romans would betray," 
prayed Gregory as he roused the ebbing courage of the Roman 
crusaders. Meanwhile, Europe made an effort to come to the 
rescue by a great council of arbitration, which met with the 
approval of the Pope. Frederick, who feared the consequences 
of delay, opposed it with all his might, and wrote strongly 
dissuasive letters to the Bishops, endeavouring to discourage 
them with dismal stories of the hygienic conditions of Rome. J 
A hundred intrepid priests, among them the abbots of Cluny, 
Citeaux, and Clairvaux, embarked at Genoa in spite of the 
Imperial warning. With outragous indiscretion, Frederick's 
admiral sailed against them, defeated them off Monte Christo, 
and after being kept at sea for three weeks under terrible 
privation, they were "heaped together like pigs" in prison. 
The capture of the priests was not merely an ecclesiastical 
enormity; it was also a political blunder, for it outraged the 
feelings of every Churchman in Europe. Frederick's " sacrilege " 
confirmed the worst impressions which Gregory's encyclical had 
made. His refusal to suspend hostilities, in response to the 
Pope's appeal for a Crusade against the Tartars, still further 
incriminated him. Gregory pleaded for the deliverance of 
Russia from this sudden and terrible scourge, which swept down 
with a shock of fury, recalling the apparition of the Huns. 
But Frederick insisted on pursuing the war. He saw his 
enemy within his grasp, and he was not inclined to lose his hold. 
Gregory was very old — over a hundred, according to the chron- 
iclers — and the terrible excitement of Frederick's approach 



174 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

overwhelmed him. He died in the August of 1241, gladdened 
by the stolid fidelity of his city, with the renegade Cardinal 
victorious at its gates. 

Frederick instantly ceased all hostilities in order to show 
that his quarrel was with Gregory IX. and not with the Papacy 
as such or with the Romans. The old and decrepid Celestine IV. 
reigned for seventeen days and died, leaving a vacancy of 
nearly two years before the next Pope was elected. The 
Cardinals forsook Rome, and the Senator Matthew Rubeus 
assumed the leadership in the interval. Frederick made no 
attempt to attack Rome, but the Romans took the initiative 
against him by attacking Tivoli and assaulting the Imperialist 
Cardinals. Frederick retaliated by besieging Rome, but in 1243 
he returned to Sicily. In the same year the Genoese Innocent IV. 
was elected to the Papacy. " I have lost a good friend among 
the Cardinals," Frederick is reported to have said, "since no 
Pope can be a Ghibelline ". The forecast was truer than he 
realised, for the honest and high-handed opposition of Gregory IX. 
was replaced by the duplicity and craft of a man of many 
wiles. 

A rebellion of imperial Viterbo, which was surreptitiously 
encouraged by Innocent, led to a renewal of hostilities, and the 
severe defeat of Frederick's forces led him to sue for peace. 
The terms which Innocent imposed were extremely humiliating. 
Frederick was to restore the entire state of the Church, to 
recognise the absolute spiritual power over princes, and to grant 
an amnesty to the Pope's adherents. The treaty, duly signed 
and sanctioned, was sold about Rome as a popular pamphlet, in 
proof of the papal victory. 

Meanwhile, Innocent had a deeper plan in reserve behind his 
negotiations with the Emperor. He first strengthened the Curia 
with ten new Gwelfic Cardinals. He then opened private 
communications with Genoa, his native city. At a convenient 
moment he contrived to receive a report of the approach of 
fictitious Imperial cavalry, which gave him a pretext for flight. 
Innocent now became once more the warrior Count of his earlier 
career. He rode full pace for Civita Vecchia, leaving his 
exhausted train of Cardinals to follow at a less extravagant pace 
behind. At Civita Vecchia a Genoese fleet met the quasi-refugees, 
and carried them to Genoa where they were hailed with delight. 
They disembarked with almost hilarious self-congratulation, 
singing as they passed through the streets, " Our soul is escaped 
from the snare of the fowler, the net is broken and we are free ". 
The words of the psalmist could not have been more felicitously 



CONTEST WITH FEEDEKICK STUPOK MUNDI 175 

chosen, for they conveyed exactly the impression which Innocent 
had intended. The flight of the Pope argued that the Emperor 
was in pursuit ; Innocent had fled before the aggression of 
Frederick, and Europe applauded the energy and spirit of his 
night ride, without detecting the masquerade. 

From Genoa, Innocent went to Lyons, where he summoned 
an oecumenical council for the summer of 1245. Only 141 
priests — mostly French — obeyed the summons, but these were 
held to be sufficient to carry through the papal agenda. Of the 
" Five troubles" which Innocent brought forward, the last was 
the one which absorbed the assembly, the condemnation of the 
Emperor. Frederick had been invited to attend, but he preferred 
to send Thaddeus of Suessa, one of his ablest friends, to 
represent him. His condemnation was, however, a foregone 
conclusion, and it was carried through in July, after a short and 
inadequate respite which was granted in response to Frederick's 
request. Frederick was excommunicated and deposed, and his 
advocate beat his breast and retired. The decree of Lyons is, 
after Canossa, the greatest landmark in mediaeval history. From 
the Imperial standpoint it was far more ominous, for it marked 
the downfall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, which gave to the 
Empire its strongest rulers and its most ambitious aim. The 
brilliant attempt of Frederick II. to realise his dream of Italian 
monarchy was a last desperate effort to bring the soaring Papacy 
to earth. With the decree of Lyons ended all reasonable 
prospect of success. 

Frederick did not, of course, submit without a protest, and 
his second and more famous manifesto is a masterly summary 
of the whole situation from the Ghibelline standpoint. He 
points to his personal grievances as a warning to all princes — 
"I am not the first, nor shall I be the last, whom the abuse of 
sacerdotal power seeks to hurl from the throne". He pleads 
the illegality of his trial, and expresses, perhaps with ex- 
aggerated emphasis, his disregard of the curse. " Do not believe, 
however, that the sentence of the Pope can bend my lofty spirit. 
My conscience is clean; God is with me. I call Him to 
witness : it has always been my desire to lead back the priests 
of every class, especially those in high position, to the humility 
of Our Lord and to the system of the pure primitive Church." 
This brings him to his positive position, the outcry for reform. 

The counter-manifesto of Innocent is equally inclusive and 
fundamental. He states clearly and unhesitatingly the theory 
of spiritual power, according to Hildebrand and Innocent III., 
without attempting to gloss over or minimise the most extreme 



176 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

pretensions upon which the quarrel with Frederick had turned. 
His reply to Frederick's accusation of worldliness is striking : 
he acknowledges that "poverty of spirit is difficult to preserve 
in the superabundance of wealth," but he protests that "not the 
use, but the abuse, of wealth is sinful ". 

Unlike the contest between Gregory VII. and Henry IV., the 
condemnation of Lyons made a profound impression on Europe 
at large. Opinions were loudly expressed on both sides. One 
man alone tried to mediate, and he was a saint. If anything is 
needed to convince us that right was not wholly on one side, 
nor justice confined to either cause, the attempt of Louis IX. to 
arbitrate supplies the proof. Innocent IV. met him at Cluny, 
and Frederick expressed to him his willingness to submit him- 
self to examination for heresy before the Archbishop of Palermo. 
But things had already gone too far: to imagine that peace 
could be restored between two such combatants by the solution 
of a metaphysical problem was the suggestion of a saint rather 
than that of a diplomatist. 

The cause of Frederick won a certain amount of sympathy 
in England and in France. A letter of complaint from England 
to the Council and an anti-clerical league of nobles in France 
gave evidence of sympathy with the Emperor's views on reform. 
But he had utterly failed to persuade the kings that his cause 
was their own. The Papacy was more real to the world at large 
than the Empire : to the Popes the National Churches largely 
owed their original existence, and the idea of Catholic unity was 
still a power and an inspiration. Political conditions were also 
in favour of the Papacy. Frederick had alienated Germany 
long ago by his concentration on the affairs of Italy. England 
was ruled by the weak and priest-ridden Henry III., and the 
King of France was a typical Catholic saint. 

The struggle which followed the edict was unworthy of both 
sides. Innocent employed all the artifices of diplomacy against 
Frederick. He encouraged the revolt of his subjects, and even 
tried to seduce his son Conrad from his allegiance. He preached 
a Crusade against him, emphasising his Saracen leanings and 
disregarding the profession of faith which Frederick had sent 
him. He united the forces of discontent in Sicily, and allowed 
his legate to conspire with a handful of nobles against the 
Emperor's life. Frederick, on his side, burned the bearers of 
papal bulls in Sicily, and condemned as heretics all who denied 
his own absolute supremacy over the Church. He claimed to 
be the Vicar of Christ, the lay-pope, worthy of adoration like the 
emperors of old. Meanwhile his son Enzio, and Eccelin, the 



CONTEST WITH FKEDEBICK STUPOE MUNDI 177 

tyrant of the House of Romano, were crushing out the Gwelfs in 
North Italy. Encouraged by these Ghibelline successes, Fred- 
erick made up his mind to march on Lyons and prove his right 
in pitched battle before the world. But, on his way, he turned 
aside to punish Parma, which offered a vigorous resistance, and 
detained him, to his surprise, for the whole winter. Still more 
unexpectedly, a sudden sortie from the town destroyed the 
Emperor's camp and completely defeated him. One disaster 
followed another. In May, 1249, his faithful and chivalrous 
young son, Enzio, fell into the hands of his enemies and lan- 
guished for twenty-two years in prison. Thaddeus of Suessa had 
already been killed at Parma ; finally, Peter della Vigna fell, like 
Boethius, a victim to his master's own suspicion. The death of 
Peter may be an indication of the inner fear of the papal con- 
demnation, which Frederick could not altogether throw off, or it 
may be accounted for by the sudden moral collapse of lost hope. 
In either case, it stains a career otherwise honourable in friend- 
ship, sAd sadly and disappointingly closes it. Frederick died in 
December, 1250, at Fiorentino — in peace, according to the 
more friendly chroniclers, clothed in a Cistercian habit and 
absolved by his devoted friend, the Archbishop of Palermo. 
Never did such brilliant gifts achieve so little and yet stand for 
such supreme negative importance. With him fell the Holy 
Roman Empire in the splendour of its world-wide power. It 
rose again under different conditions, but it is henceforth an 
anachronism, deriving its vigour from the Teutonic monarchy 
which superseded it, and whose interests were, if not antagonistic, 
at least incompatible with its fullest development. A sym- 
pathetic modern character sketch of Frederick gives two main 
reasons why, with all his powers of mind and personality, he 
failed to affect his age except as an undermining influence. 
The first was his lack of nationality. " There was no national 
or local cause of which he could be looked on as the champion. 
There was no nation, no province, no city which could claim 
him as its own peculiar hero." Deeper still was his lack of 
mental contemporaries. "A man who showed no condescension 
to the feelings of his age, whether good or evil, could not directly 
influence that age. . . . Direct influence on the world of his 
own age he had none. He may have undermined a stately 
edifice which was still to survive for ages ; but he simply under- 
mined. He left no traces of himself in the character of a 
founder ; he left as few in the character of an open and avowed 
destroyer." 

12 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE LAST STRUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN AND 
THE COMING OF THE FRENCH, a.d. 1251-1276 

FOR four more years Innocent carried on the quarrel with 
the two sons to whom Frederick had bequeathed his 
cause, Manfred, the bastard Prince of Taranto, and 
Conrad, the legitimate heir to the kingdom. Manfred, the hero 
of chivalry and romance, inherited his father's talent and 
charm, together with his ill-fortune. Conrad was hardly more 
than a boy and his career was too short to show more than 
promise. A series of victories in 1252 enabled him to enter his 
capital victorious in 1253. In 1254, Innocent excommunicated 
him and offered his crown to the infant son of Henry III. of 
England. The Pope had traded on the credulity of Henry, re- 
presenting the King of Sicily as a prodigy of vice, and extorting 
large sums from the English exchequer for the expenses of the 
Sicilian wars. But in May, Conrad died, leaving his crown to 
his infant son Conradin, whom he optimistically placed in the 
guardianship of the Pope. The regency was entrusted to Ber- 
thold of Regensburg, but he soon relinquished it with relief to 
Manfred, who was the obvious person to protect the rights of his 
nephew. Manfred found himself obliged to take an oath of 
vassalage to Innocent, "without prejudice to the rights of the 
child Conradin," and to follow up the homage by conducting 
Innocent in state into the kingdom. But Manfred and Innocent 
understood one another perfectly. The Pope knew that Manfred's 
submission was merely a means of tiding over an awkward 
moment, and Manfred realised that Innocent was still negotiat- 
ing with England. The episode terminated in the sudden flight 
of Manfred and his defeat of the papal forces at Lucera. In the 
last month of the year Innocent IV. died at Naples, exhausted 
by his long struggle against Frederick and his House. His 
energy was phenomenal, and his power of overriding obstacles 
made him an even more formidable antagonist than Gregory 
IX. And yet, in the history of the relations of the Papacy 

178 



LAST STEUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 179 

with the national Churches, the pontificate of Innocent IV. is 
singularly unfortunate. It marks the beginning of the period 
when oppression supplants impression. The war with the 
Hohenstaufens made money the first object of papal policy, 
and the exactions of Innocent had not the justification of 
serving a great aim. The so-called Pragmatic Sanction of St. 
Louis, although it is a forgery of fifteenth century Protestantism, 
is not altogether groundless, and it indicates the critical attitude 
with which the most devoted of Churchmen regarded the abuses 
of the political Papacy. The opposition of Robert Grostete gives 
a corresponding illustration of the attitude of the English Church. 
The outcry against clerical abuses comes no longer from the 
Papacy itself, as in the time of Innocent III., but from indepen- 
dent Churchmen, supported by national sentiment. The protest 
against papal exactions is included in the programme of reform, 
and the union of the two forces is the foundation of Protes- 
tantism. In England an unfortunate coincidence between the 
interests of the Crown and the Papacy, in connection with Sicily, 
joined the movements of ecclesiastical reform and papal re- 
sistance to the third and more vital cause of nationality against 
incompetent monarchy. The policy of Innocent IV. gave to the 
English rebellion of 1258 a definitely anti-papal character, and 
henceforth the English national attitude to the Papacy is habitu- 
ally defensive and intermittently hostile. 

The successor of Innocent IV. was almost a complete con- 
trast to his predecessor. Matthew Paris, the English chronicler, 
describes him as " kindly and pious, assiduous in prayer and 
strenuously ascetic, but easily moved by flatterers and inclined 
to avarice ". From other sources we learn that Alexander TV. 
was fat, good-humoured, and easy-going. The character sketches 
of mediseval chroniclers often tell us more by what they leave 
out than by the qualities which they enumerate. The most 
obvious characteristic of Alexander was his lack of intellect ; he 
was a simple, unpretentious soul, who tried to follow in the steps 
of his predecessor and utterly failed to manipulate the delicate 
weapons which he found ready for his use. His chief aim was 
to keep on good terms with everyone. He made overtures to 
Manfred, and announced his benevolent intentions to Conradin's 
guardians ; he confirmed Edmund of England's enfeoffment at 
the same time, and translated Henry III.'s crusading vow into 
the duty of conquering Sicily. He merely succeeded in loosen- 
ing the whole diplomatic system which Innocent IV. had woven 
round the Papacy. 

The only result of the Pope's flabby duplicity was to irritate 



180 A SHORT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Manfred into decisive action. In 1258, he crowned himself 
King of Sicily, in deliberate disregard of the rights of Conradin. 
If ever usurpation was justifiable, it was so in this case, for the 
struggle to keep an absent child on the throne of Sicily was 
hopeless from the first. But the kingship of the Sicilies was 
only the stepping-stone to Manfred's larger ambition. He openly 
announced his intention of conquering the whole of Italy and 
uniting it in his own person. The Tuscan county had already 
submitted to him and his victory of Arbia gave him Florence. 
But his strongest allies were the Arab forces of the Mohammedan 
colony at Lucera, whose devotion and stability were a legacy from 
Frederick the Wonderful. Against these invaluable servants of 
the Hohenstaufen — said by Matthew Paris to have numbered 
60,000 fighting men — all the efforts of the last three Popes 
had failed. Excommunications, persecutions, and mendicant 
missions left them perfectly unmoved, and Alexander IV. 's 
efforts to expel them from Italy were equally unavailing. They 
remained firmly rooted in the land, and finally contributed to 
the racial homogeneity of southern Italy. 

Meanwhile the German crown was being tossed about among 
foreign princes, among whom Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso 
of Castile were the only serious competitors. No one took the 
child Conradin into consideration except the Pope, who saw in 
his weakness the chief hope of regaining unrivalled supremacy 
in Italy. Alexander therefore instigated the Florentine Gwelfs 
to appeal to Conradin's guardians, and formed in the boy's name 
an Umbrian league in opposition to the Tuscan league of Man- 
fred. Before, however, he could carry this policy forward, 
Alexander died at Viterbo in May, 1261. 

Inconspicuous as it was in Italian policy, the pontificate of 
Alexander was an epoch in the city of Rome. During the 
absence of his predecessor from the city, the great Bolognese 
Brancaleone d'Andolo had at last planted in Rome the seeds of 
industrial organisation on the lines laid down by successful 
communes. Alexander returned, in 1255, to a new Rome, swept 
and garnished by the wisdom of Brancaleone, but, as Pope, he 
cordially disapproved of the change. His stay in the city was 
stormy and brief. He was almost a cypher in the hands of the 
Gwelfic nobility, who instantly compassed the fall and banish- 
ment of Brancaleone, but were unable to prevent his return on 
the tide of reaction two years later. On his restoration to power 
the great popular leader made an alliance in the name of the 
Romans with Manfred. Alexander tried his spiritual weapons, 
but the Ghibellines rendered these powerless by threatening to 






LAST STEUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUEEN 181 

destroy papal Anagni unless the ban was removed from their 
hero. The death of Brancaleone in 1258 left Rome to fall back 
into the state of industrial chaos from which he had partially- 
rescued it. There is no aspect of Papal history more unhappy 
than the relations between the Popes and the city of Rome, and 
there is nothing which it is harder to forgive the great political 
Popes than their relentless suppression of every poor effort to- 
wards freedom which the city ever made. The old fallacy by 
which tyranny always tries to justify itself — that those who are 
oppressed are incapable of freedom — is the only apology which 
it is possible to bring forward, and its inadequacy was never more 
pitifully made clear. 

The Monk of Padua, writing under Alexander's pontificate, 
gives a terrible picture of the suffering which the Hohenstaufen 
struggle had brought on Italy. " My soul shudders to describe 
the sufferings of the time, for it is now twenty years since 
the blood of Italy flowed like a stream on account of the discord 
between Church and Empire." The thirteenth century was 
essentially an age of contrast, of high lights and dark shadows, 
and at this particular moment the shadows were the more con- 
spicuous. The fall of the tyrant house of Romano gives a strange 
and bizarre impression, which is not uncharacteristic. Ezzelino, 
the son-in-law of 'Frederick and the bulwark of the Ghibelline 
cause in Central Italy, was the Nero of his times. His fantastic 
cruelty, amounting to madness, was expiated in captivity in his 
castle at Soneiro, where the people gazed at him "as at an owl" 
through the bars of his dungeon, with hatred tinged with awe 
for his monstrous wickedness. His brother Alberic was dragged 
to death by wild horses after seeing his sons strangled in his 
arms. We shudder at the terrible working of the mediaeval con- 
science, which demanded retribution to the uttermost farthing, 
and carried the principle of " an eye for an eye " to such an ap- 
paling conclusion. Simultaneously with the fall of the House 
of Romano one of the strangest phenomena of the Middle Ages 
made its appearance in Italy. A sudden outburst of asceticism, 
the product of acute distress, found expression in the rise of the 
Flagellants. Crowds of priests and friars, knights and burghers, 
men, women, and children, scourged themselves through the 
streets of the cities of Umbria crying : " Peace, peace ! Lord, 
give us peace ! " In its origin, a pure and touching and very 
mediaeval appeal to penitence, as the one hope of the desolate, 
the movement spread with extraordinary rapidity, lost its sin- 
cerity, and by the time it reached Rome, in 1260, degenerated 
into mad fanaticism. The contemporary chroniclers speak pi 



182 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

the Flagellant movement with amazement and later ones with 
ridicule ; it remains for history a pathetic expression of national 
misery, and a striking testimony to the nearness of religion to 
daily life in the thirteenth century. 

The new Pope, Urban IV., 1 was the son of a French shoe- 
maker, an astute man of petty ideals and of common-place 
mind. He saw at once the fruitlessness of the attempt of his 
predecessors to draw England into Italian politics. We had 
already established our reputation as an insular nation. More- 
over, the Crown had been thoroughly weakened by the Provisions 
of Oxford, and the country was already up in arms against ad- 
ditional taxation. So Urban turned to France, his own country, 
and inaugurated the philo-Frankish policy, which was to bring 
the Papacy to such deep abasement in the next generation. He 
invited Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Louis, to come and 
re-enact the part of Charles the Great, and deliver the Papacy 
from its enemies. Louis IX. was relieved to find an outlet for 
the superabundant energies of his younger brother. Accord- 
ingly, Charles prepared for an Italian expedition, and became 
Senator of Rome in 1263. 

Urban meanwhile remained at Orvieto on bad terms with 
Rome and filled with anxiety as to the issue of his policy. Had 
he merely introduced another competitor into the overcrowded 
arena ? The best thing to hope for was that Charles and Man- 
fred, brilliant and knightly warriors both, should exhaust each 
other in the struggle and leave the spoils to the Pope. After 
fruitless attempts to negotiate with Urban, Manfred sent an ex- 
pedition to Rome under one of his best generals, Peter of Vico. 
It failed, owing to the strength of the Gwelfs in the city, although 
Urban's position was decidedly hazardous. In 1264 the French 
Pope died at Orvieto, never having once entered the Holy City. 
His work, such as it was, had been thoroughly accomplished. 
He had entirely Gallicanised the Papal Court. He sur- 
rounded himself with French officials, and created several 
French Cardinals. If his motives were political, they were 
justified by their results. The French Bishops whom Urban 
gathered round him were almost all men of conspicuous emi- 
nence, and the great Churchmen who were drawn from the 
France of St. Louis were men who would raise the standard of 
any hierarchy. Among them, none was held in higher esteem 
than Guy Foulquois, Bishop of Puy and Archbishop of Narbonne. 

The successor of Urban IV., elected after four months' 

» 1261-64. 



LAST STBUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 183 

vacancy, was a man of stainless character and commanding 
personality. Guy Foulquois had spent the greater part of his 
life as a lawyer and a layman. He had been a councillor of 
Louis IX., who valued him so highly that he dissuaded him 
from becoming a monk after his wife's death. He was how- 
ever ordained, and lived for a time according to the Carthusian 
rule. His life in the world left no stain of ambition on his 
pastoral career. He became Bishop of Puy in obedience to a 
strong sense of duty, accepted a Cardinalate under pressure, 
and wept when he was made Pope. He was elected during his 
absence in England, where he had been sent, as a man renowned 
for his integrity, to arbitrate between the Crown and the baron- 
age. There is a story that he travelled in disguise as a mendi- 
cant as far as Perugia, where the Curia met him and conducted 
him in pomp to Viterbo. 

Guy Foulquois took the name of Clement IV. His pontificate 
restores one's faith in the inherent possibilities of the mediaeval 
Papacy. No trace of avarice or nepotism spoils the perfection 
of his self-devotion. "A man, stern to himself and gentle to 
others," is the pleasing verdict of a contemporary. And yet he 
pursued the quarrel with Manfred with the same vigour as his 
more worldly predecessors. He taxed Europe for the Sicilian 
war, and urged Charles of Anjou to hasten his preparations for 
the French expedition. The character of Clement — perfectly 
sincere, disinterested, and dutiful — convinces us of the inevita- 
bility of the Hohenstaufen struggle. Other Popes may have 
been carried away by personal ambition, by passionate hostility, 
or the fascinations of intrigue, but Guy Foulquois was above 
these things; nothing but a belief that the supremacy of the 
Papacy in Italy was indispensable to the highest good of 
Catholic unity would have induced him to prolong the troubles 
of Italy. 

Clement IV. very soon grasped one important point in the 
education of a Pope. His letter to Charles of Anjou shows how 
well he understood the Roman character. " The Romans demand 
from their Rector," he says, "an imposing appearance, sonorous 
speeches, and formidable actions, asserting that such are due to 
the sovereignty of the world." The difficulty which Charles 
found in taking the Pope's advice arose from his lack of funds. 
" An imposing appearance " was a very expensive thing to 
achieve in the thirteenth century, especially since Frederick 
Stupor Mundi, with his elephants and his Saracens, had raised 
the standard of pageantry to such an extravagant limit. " Son- 
orous speeches " were cheap enough, but " formidable actions " 



184 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

were a serious problem to the penurious prince, and Charles 
had to rob the Lateran to pay his way. Even then the Gwelfs 
remained dissatisfied, and the Ghibellines daily accumulated in 
the city. Prompt action was the only hope for the French ex- 
pedition, and in urging Charles to come quickly, Clement knew 
he could count on his compliance. Charles came, and was 
greeted in Rome in May, 1265, with a tournament, a war-dance, 
and outbursts of Gwelfic loyalty. He took up his abode in the 
Lateran, whence Clement was impelled tactfully to remove him : 
the Pope did not allow his personal humility to countenance any 
indignity to the papal Office. In June a commission of Cardin- 
als invested Charles with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and 
in the following January he was crowned, together with his wife, 
Beatrix, in St. Peter's. It was only a paper sovereignty, and it 
was given grudgingly by the Pope, who began to question the 
sagacity of the French policy, now that Charles, the firebrand, 
was actually his guest. Had he merely pledged himself to sup- 
port one master against another, and was Charles any less 
dangerous than Manfred when it came to a question of corona- 
tion ? Anyhow, it was too late to draw back. Charles was in 
Rome with his army : Manfred was openly flaunting his inten- 
tion of capturing not only Italy, but the Imperial Crown. For a 
moment Manfred had hopes of winning over Clement, but the 
coronation of Charles dismissed them. One last appeal was 
rejected with the ominous answer, "Let Manfred know that the 
time for grace is past. Everything has its time, but time has 
not everything. The hero in arms has already issued from the 
gate : the axe is already laid to the roots." 

The reason why the hero had already issued from the gates 
was that penury had driven him forth. The army of Provence 
had arrived, and there was no money to maintain it. With his 
usual impetuosity, Charles set out at once to conquer the king- 
dom. He drew up his weary forces on the hills above Benevento, 
overlooking the plains where Manfred's army lay encamped. 
On February 26, 1266, the battle of Benevento summarised in one 
great epic the long struggle between the Papacy and the Hohen- 
staufen. It was one of those brilliant scenes which seem to live 
in history to remind us that the ages of chivalry, known to us 
in legend and song, are no mere poet's dream — a fitting setting 
for the legends of Arthur and the Round Table — but an historical 
fact. The details of the battle have been too often described to 
need re-telling. Manfred's strength lay in his Saracen archers, who 
successfully repulsed the Provencal infantry. But the ultimate 
victoryi rested with the invincible cavalry of France. The 



LAST STKUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 185 

valiant German knights stood their ground with sturdy heroism, 
but they were no match for Charles's picked legion, which rode 
through them with the battle-cry of " Montjoie," and put to flight 
the Apulian forces in the rear. Charles wrote that evening to 
inform the Pope of his victory : " I inform your Holiness of this 
great victory in order that you may thank the Almighty, Who 
has granted it, and Who fights for the cause of the Church by 
my army ". 

Two days after the battle, the captive counts, who were taken 
at Benevento, were led across the battlefield in chains to identify 
the body of Manfred. The gallant Jordan of Anglano hid his 
face and wept. " O my King ! " he cried in anguish as he gazed 
on the form of the idolised leader. By his side lay the faithful 
Theobald Anibaldi, his brother-in-arms, who had followed him to 
the death. The two had plunged into the thick of the fight, de- 
termined to die in honour rather than to live in shame. Man- 
fred was the type of hero for whom men are willing to die. 
Priests and troubadours fought over his reputation, the priests 
loading him with the guilt of crimes which he never committed, 
and the troubadors extolling him in exaggerated and fulsome 
praise. His true greatness was recognised by the soldiers who 
fought against him at Benevento, and saw him die. He was 
honourably buried, but, of course, without ecclesiastical rites, 
by order of Charles of Anjou, and the French soldiers, passing 
the place where his body lay, paid a spontaneous tribute to the 
" preux chevalier " by each placing a stone on his grave, leaving 
thus an immense monument to mark it. Charles of Anjou 
sullied the glory of his victory by the carnage which followed it. 
Clement IV. was appalled at the thoroughness with which his 
work had been done. " Such," he cried in horror, " is the re- 
venge of which I approved the beginning." Moreover, the 
brutality of Charles in the hour of victory did much to alienate 
Italy from his cause. "Where are my Ghibellines, on whom I 
had placed my hopes?" Manfred had cried in bitterness in 
the hour of defeat. Now that Manfred was dead and his infant 
sons in captivity, the Ghibellines came out of hiding, and looked 
round for a new leader. In Rome they were strong enough to 
conduct a popular rebellion, and to force the Pope to recognise 
as Senator Don Arrigo of Castile, brother to Alfonso, titular 
King of the Romans. In Sicily, the oppressions of the Angevin 
King made the rule of Manfred seem mild. In Tuscany, the 
fugitive remnant of Manfred's party gathered together and 
plotted with true Italian ingenuity. 

Beyond the Alps, in a Swabian castle, the last of the 



186 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

Hohenstaufen was growing up in a world of dreams, surrounded 
by minstrels who sang to him of the past glories of his house, 
and thrilled his young soul with stories of the two Fredericks. 
To Conradin, in his fifteenth year, envoys came from the 
Ghibelline cities, summoning him to the fatal Hohenstaufen 
mission. The enchantment worked with terrible rapidity. In 
vain his mother tried to hold him back ; her wisdom was 
dismissed as womanly weakness and hardly weighed in the 
balance against the encouragement of the boy's uncles. Conradin 
heard the call of the siren land and rushed headlong to his fate. 
Clement watched his preparations half in pity and half in 
irritation. He opened proceedings against him with weary 
unconcern, as a matter of course, threatening his adherents 
with excommunication. " I do not lay much stress on the 
envoys whom the Ghibillines have sent to their idol, the boy 
Conradin, I am too well acquainted with his position," Clement 
writes; "it is so pitiable that he can do nothing, either for 
himself or his adherents ". It was tiresome to have the peace 
of Italy postponed by a headstrong boy, and Clement's language 
becomes more exasperated as the cause of the young Hohen- 
staufen gains strength in Italy. 

In September, 1267, Conradin set out for Italy with his uncle 
Duke Lewis and other German nobles. Young Frederick of 
Austria, like Conradin, an orphan of a fallen dynasty, accom- 
panied the heir of the Hohenstaufen as his sworn brother. The 
bond was a reality in these days of high adventure. Manfred's 
uncle, Galvan Lancia, had gone before Conradin to Rome, and 
against his reception there, Clement hurled an indignant protest. 
But a Ghibelline league between Tuscany and Rome held the 
city faithful to the Hohenstaufen cause. Conradin was mean- 
while received with rapture at Pisa and Siena, and the victory 
of his army at Ponte a Valle left the road to Rome open to him. 
From Monte Mario he looked across in ecstasy to the arena of 
Frederick II. and Manfred. His magnificent reception in Rome 
still further dazzled the romantic boy. Amid draperies and 
jewels and dancing he was led to the Capitol and acclaimed 
Emperor of Rome. In August, 1268, he set out with a well- 
equipped army to conquer Sicily. At Tagliacozzo he met the 
forces of Charles, and the order of the events of the battle of 
Benevento repeated itself with remarkable consistency. Conradin 
was victorious with the first two divisions of his army, but was 
overtaken in the midst of his exultations by the third and 
strongest contingent of the French. Don Arrigo, who with his 
Spaniards was the flower of Conradin's army, had pursued ths 



LAST STEUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 187 

retreating Angevins too far. He returned to rejoin, as he 
thought, Conradin's victorious troops, and found himself 
surrounded by the cry of "Montjoie" and the banners of the 
lilies. 

Charles announced his victory once more to Clement, in 
practically the same words as he had used two years before. 
The pathetic story of Conradin's flight is too pitiable to dwell 
upon ; how the Eomans turned their backs on the fugitive boy, 
whom only a fortnight before they had loaded with honours ; 
how he fled in disguise to the sea, and was captured by John 
Frangipani ; how he was delivered into the hands of Charles 
and executed at Naples — this is the epilogue of the Hohenstaufen 
drama. The youth and innocence of Conradin could not save 
him from the ill-fortune which dogged his House. Child as he 
was, he died like his fathers with courage and dignity, appealing 
to the mercy of Heaven to mitigate the Church's condemnation. 

The Hohenstaufen cause was dead. The worst danger which 
the political Papacy ever had to face lay conquered at its feet. 
The work of conquest had been accomplished at tremendous 
cost, and the concentration of its energies, at the zenith of its 
power, for more than a century, on a temporal struggle was a 
disaster from which the Papacy never recovered. But neither 
the political exhaustion nor the moral deterioration made itself 
felt immediately, for the work of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. 
took long to undermine. All the elements out of which the 
Reformation was formed were traceable at the close of the 
thirteenth century, but they had hardly come to light, and they 
lacked every vestige of cohesion. 

Within a month of Conradin's death, Clement IV. died at 
Viterbo. We cannot help wishing that he had tried to save 
Conradin. He was great enough to have justified the hope that 
he would rise above his age and be pitiful to so defenceless an 
enemy. It took three years to elect his successor, and the 
Cardinals were only brought to the point by the solicitations of 
St. Bonaventura. In 1271, Gregory X., of the famous House of 
Visconti, was elected during his absence in the East, where he 
was crusading with Edward, the heir of England. He was 
exactly the right man for the work which lay before him. He 
was before all things a peace-maker, but on the model of 
Honorius III. rather than of Alexander IV. The chief work of his 
pontificate was the restoration of the Empire, which he realised 
to be essential to the order of the Christian world. The candidate 
put forward by the Germans was Rudolf of Hapsburg, a humble 
supporter of the Hohenstaufen, whose insignificance was his 



188 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

chief qualification in the eyes of his electors. The Pope would 
hardly have chosen a Ghibelline Emperor, but Gregory resolved 
to make the best of it, and get as good terms as he could. 
Rudolf is described as a " serious, unimaginative, commonplace 
man," and he was unlikely to cause the Popes much anxiety. 
He addressed Gregory in terms of becoming submission : " I fix 
my hopes on thee and fall at the feet of thy Holiness, humbly 
entreating thee to uphold me in the duty which I have under- 
taken ". 

Gregory was as brave as he was pacific. The last two Popes had 
never ventured to set foot in Rome in the whole course of their 
pontificate. Gregory went straight to the city and did what he 
could to patronise the Gwelf and Ghibelline factions which rent it 
asunder. He was not very successful, either in Rome, where fac- 
tion fighting was endemic, or in Florence, where it had temporarily 
fired the imagination of the city. But the effect of his pacific 
policy on Europe in restoring the ideal of peace was incalculable. 
The central event of his pontificate was the great Council of 
Lyons in 1275. Here the restoration of the Empire was confirmed 
in the person of Rudolf, and Alfonso of Castile was persuaded 
to forego his claims. Polite speeches passed between the envoys 
of Rudolf and Gregory, and the old and impossible relationship 
between the " twin powers " was restored in all its elaboration 
of meaningless metaphor. Rudolf naturally could not afford to 
be difficult. He expressed his willingness to surrender the 
sovereignty of Sicily, and the imperial claims in Rome and 
the Patrimony. 

The Council of Lyons carried through one other important 
piece of business — it drew up and passed the law of Conclave. 
Taught by the exigencies of his own election, Gregory ordained 
that in the future the Cardinal-electors should be shut up " with 
one key" during the election of a Pope, and submitted to a 
course of increasing privations until they could come to a 
decision. It was hoped that the discomfort of the Cardinals 
would urge them to brevity, and that their enclosure would cut 
them off from outer influences. How far it succeeded in secur- 
ing these objects, subsequent history shows : repealed from time 
to time, and modified from its first severity, it still survives as 
an essential adjunct of papal administration. 

A third incident of the Council had a merely temporary 
importance, while it seemed to the world at large a momentous 
event. This was the formal union with the Greek Church, 
which was brought about by St. Bonaventura. It was not des- 
tined to last, but it confirmed the impression which the reign of 



LAST STEUGGLE WITH THE HOHENSTAUFEN 189 

Gregory had already created as an era of peace. In 1276, on his 
way back from the Council, Gregory X. died at Arezzo, old and 
full of honour, surrounded by the praises of the peace which he 
had made. The object which lay nearest his heart remained, 
however, unfulfilled. He was before all things a crusader, and 
the underlying motive of the good which he had wrought as 
Pope was his zeal for the Holy War. The peace of Europe was 
to him a means and not an end. Christendom received the gift 
of peace and praised the giver, but the only payment which he 
asked, it was unprepared to yield. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE FALL OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY: BONIFACE VIII., 

a.d. 1276-1303 

THE death of Gregory X. was followed by an interlude of 
short pontificates and growing unrest. Of the three 
Popes who reigned during the year 1276, the third alone 
made any impression on his age. Innocent V. and Hadrian V. 
died before they had used their powers. The Portuguese John 
XXI was an eccentric character, whom some of his contem- 
poraries regarded as a magician and others as a lunatic. He 
seems to have been a mathematician of real ability, whom 
Gregory X. had esteemed for his learning ; but as Pope he was 
undoubtedly a failure. He was killed within a year of his 
accession by a falling ceiling in his new palace at Viterbo — an 
end which he was believed to have brought upon himself by 
his concourse with the powers of evil. 

In 1277 a series of aristocratic Roman Popes began in the 
accession of Nicholas III. (the son of Matthew Rubeus of the 
noble house of Orsini). His rule was secular and able, and his 
chief object was to establish the papal constitution on a more 
satisfactory basis in the states of the Church. He ransacked the 
archives and produced deeds of gift to prove his rights in Romag- 
na and Pentapolis. He stifled the first hint of resistance from 
the Emperor Rudolf by promising him the rights formerly exer- 
cised by Charles of Anjou in Tuscany. The so-called "tyrants" 
of the Romagna did homage to Nicholas, and the great names 
of Malatesta, Polentani, and Guido of Montefeltro are heard in 
harmony with those of the Pope and his family. Even Bologna 
came into the orbit of peace which surrounded Nicholas. 
Finally, Nicholas succeeded in combining the Senatorship with 
the papal power. He could not personally hold the office, but he 
gave it to his brother and so paved the way for later popes to go 
further and unite the two offices in one. His last act of pacifi- 
cation brought Charles and Rudolf to terms with one another, 
and so left Europe free for the time being from an Imperial 
struggle. Nicholas died in 1280, leaving a singularly complete 
record behind him. His aims and his interests were frankly 

190 



THE FALL OP THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY 191 

secular, and he has often been arraigned as the founder of 
nepotism. But what he did, he did thoroughly, and his peace 
policy was more beneficial to Italy than many a more idealistic 
effort. 

The reign of Martin IV., a Frenchman of low birth (1281-1285), 
was a reversion to the French domination. French influence 
once more pervaded and governed the Curia, with deplorable 
consequences for the Papacy. The hostility to the French, 
which had long been smouldering in Sicily, broke out in 1282 
in the eruption named the Sicilian Vespers. The assassina- 
tion of the whole French population of the island evoked an 
outcry of vengeance from Charles, which found an echo in his 
faithful servant the Pope. A Ghibelline reaction in Italy and a 
rising in Rome crippled Martin's power of action. Before 
Charles could put his threats into effect he died, leaving his son 
and heir a prisoner in the hands of Peter of Aragon, who had 
taken advantage of the general unrest to seize the Sicilian crown. 
In the same year Martin followed his master to the grave. 

Under Honorius IV. of the Savelli family (1285-1287), the 
House of Aragon maintained itself in Sicily in spite of papal 
denunciation. Under Nicholas IV. (1288-1292), Charles II. was 
crowned, but he was king by ceremony alone. In 1292, the fall 
of Acre brought the epoch of the Crusades to a close. The 
death of Rudolf of Hapsburg was another landmark. From 
this point the Popes ceased to regard themselves definitely as 
the leaders of Christian chivalry against the heathen world; 
from this point also the struggle between the keys and the Im- 
perium becomes submerged in the under-current of rising forces 
which was sweeping on towards the evolution of the new world. 
The danger to the Papacy was the same as that which threatens 
an individual who pins his faith to the temporary and inessential 
expression of his ideal. The Popes had for so long been satisfied 
and absorbed in their two great mediseval enterprises that they 
had forgotten to read the signs of the times. Europe was making 
new wine, and the Papacy had nothing but old bottles to receive 
it. 

It was possibly some unconscious apprehension of this which 
led to the strange and inexplicable events of the year 1294. Two 
years had passed since the death of Nicholas IV. and the Cardi- 
nals assembled at Perugia in July were unable to come to any 
decision as to his successor. Name after name had been 
suggested and thrown out, when, more it seems by chance than 
by design, someone mentioned Peter Murrone, the hermit of 
Sulmona. The result was the election to the distracted Papacy 



192 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of a simple saint. The experiment was a failure, and the story 
of " San Celestino " remains as a monument for the humiliation 
of his successors. The infinite pathos of his six months' pontifi- 
cate, the confusion which his simplicity wrought among his 
friends and enemies alike, and the incongruity of his spiritual 
graces with the demands of the Vatican are as great an arraign- 
ment of the political Papacy as the vices of his least worthy 
successor. From a political point of view, the election of a tired 
and holy old man at such a crisis was, of course, an absurdity. 
From the first Celestine V. surrendered to the domination of the 
master-mind of Cardinal Gaetani. From the little cell which he 
built himself in a corner of the Vatican he shed all the graces 
of his holiness on the unworthy world about him — with disas- 
trous results. Offices were given away many times over because 
the Pope could not deny the importunate. Advantage was taken 
on all sides of his humility, his gentleness, and his utter ignor- 
ance. He was, however, capable of firmness where to him the 
way seemed clear. In his resolute self-deposition he withstood 
the prayers of the whole curia and the tears of Gaetani himself. 
" St. Peter's ship is wrecking, with me at its helm," he said, and 
asking pardon of the princes of the Church, he passed out 
through their midst. 

Behind the sanctity of Celestine, plots and intrigues had 
screened themselves so effectually that it is impossible to dis- 
entangle the events which actually occurred from the fictions 
which subsequently enfolded them. On his retirement, the 
election of Gaetani was inevitable, but it could hardly be called 
popular. He was accused by his enemies of persuading Celestine 
to abdicate by unlawful means. It remained an open question 
whether such an abdication was morally valid or legally possible. 
It was therefore a political necessity to keep Celestine in custody, 
and his sudden death in the Castle of Fumore in 1296 gave some 
colour to the rumour of foul play. It is unlikely that Boniface 
VIII. was guilty of Celestine's death. Consummate statesman 
as he was, he must have foreseen the inevitable consequences of 
such a crime, and the opposition of the Celestine party which 
dogged him throughout his pontificate far outweighed any pos- 
sible advantages in the death of the gentle and innocuous saint. 

Benedict Gaetani was seventy-six years old when he became 
Pope in 1295. He had been admirably trained as a lawyer and 
a legate in diplomatic art. He had a magnificent presence and 
the spirit of a Csesar. He had " played much at the game of 
the world," and his attitude towards it was contemptuous and in- 
tolerant. His coronation festival was an index of his reign. 



THE FALL OF THE MEDIAEVAL PAPACY 193 

Dressed in full pontificals he rode on a white palfrey through 
the festive streets, while two kings, Charles of Naples and Charles 
Martel of Hungary, held his bridle. The Papacy of humility 
had wrought havoc and disaster which the reign of magnificence 
tried to repair. The policy which he pursued in Italy was far- 
sighted and vigorous. Instead of curbing the democratic growth 
of the rising cities, he turned it to his own account by securing 
the magisterial power in his own person. City after city elected 
him as Podesta. and even Rome itself allowed him to choose its 
senators. In these offices his own nephews were very useful. 
The Gaetani were a comparatively unknown family until 
Boniface became a Cardinal, but in his orbit his nephews rose 
to undreamt-of splendour. One, Francesco, became a Cardinal ; 
another, Peter, Count Palatine and Rector of Tuscany. Peter's 
sons, Benedict and Lotfred, added still further dignities to the 
family connection. Their rise brought them, however, first into 
competition and afterwards into collision with the older and 
more aristocratic Colonna family, and the quarrels which followed 
led directly to the downfall of the Pope. 

But it was the imperial, rather than the monarchical, aspect 
of his office which principally attracted Boniface. Since the 
Interregnum the Holy Roman Empire had undoubtedly been a 
negligible quantity, and Boniface made no pretence at acknow- 
ledging it except when occasionally it suited his diplomacy to do 
so. " I am Caesar : I am Emperor," he exclaimed on one occa- 
sion when the ambassadors of the de facto Emperor Albert came 
before him. The Popes had long since discarded the theory of 
the twin powers : Boniface left no place in his scheme for any 
'■ imperium " at all, other than his own. When, however, in 1303, 
the Papacy needed an ally in the face of the defiance of England 
and France. Boniface pardoned Albert, " the one-eyed sinner," and 
acknowledged him as Emperor on conditions of slavish obedience. 

Boniface took advantage of the opening of the new century to 
proclaim his ideal in the famous jubilee of 1300. Crowds of 
pilgrims from the ends of the earth thronged the streets of Rome 
and fought their way to the altar of St. Peter to deposit their 
gifts. Streets were widened and bridges thrown out to accommo- 
date their progress. The pilgrims were almost entirely humble 
people, and very few nobles and only one king swelled their 
ranks. The piety and self-sacrifice which they showed was a 
touching and impressive tribute to the greatness of the mediaeval 
Papacy. In this last pageant of her golden age, the Roman 
Church reached the climax of her outward splendour. Among 
the crowds who thronged the streets were many who drew from 

13 



194 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

the great festival the inspiration of a masterpiece. Dante began 
his poem as from Easter in the same year. The young Giotto, 
at work in Rome for the Pope's nephew, paused to paint the 
opening of the festival on the walls of the Lateran. Giovanni 
Villani, the Florentine historian, " also found himself in that 
blessed pilgrimage to the holy city of Rome," and returned to his 
native town inspired by the spell of antiquity to enrich posterity 
with his attractive chronicle. The triumph, which seemed so 
complete, had in it an element of tragedy in the face of what 
followed. The fall of Boniface was already signalled by the 
opening of his quarrel with the King of France, and his humilia- 
tion was only a prelude to the degradation of the Papacy. Only 
five years separate the glorious jubilee from the " Babylonish 
captivity ". 

No abler statesman than Boniface ever wore the papal tiara, 
but he had the misfortune to live in an age of great men. Hilde- 
brand had gained his victory over the profligate Henry IV. ; 
Innocent III. had no more formidable antagonist than the con- 
temptible King John ; Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. each fought 
their round with Frederick II., the misunderstood anachronism. 
Boniface was probably the intellectual equal of these his ablest 
predecessors, but none of these had been faced at one moment 
by two such foes as Philip le Bel of France and Edward I. of 
England. 

Hostilities with England of a passive kind had begun at the 
opening of Boniface's reign. He had sent two legates to England 
to demand that the war between England and France should 
cease. Edward turned a deaf ear to the Pope's requirements and 
continued to tax the clergy to pay his military expenses. Boni- 
face was actuated by two motives : he wanted to establish the 
peace of Europe, and he disliked the drain on ecclesiastical 
resources which royal taxation created. Edward's obduracy led 
to the thunderbolt of " Clericis laicos ". The Bull asserted the 
complete immunity of clerical bodies from every kind of lay taxa- 
tion ; the laity were forbidden to receive and the clergy to pay 
on penalty of excommunication. It was an epitome of papal 
pretension — the translation of high papal theory into terms of 
finance. The clergy were ready enough at first to follow the lead 
of Boniface. They were tired of paying for wars in which they 
were little concerned, and Edward's demands had certainly been 
exacting. The Dean of St. Paul's had fallen dead of fright at 
Edward's feet in the middle of an expostulation in 1294. His 
place as the champion of resistance was taken by the dauntless 
Archbishop Winchelsea, who refused the subsidy in the name of 



THE FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY 195 

the clergy at the Parliament of Bury in 1295. Edward in retalia- 
tion locked the ecclesiastical barns with the royal seal. Win- 
chelsea then ordered the papal Bull to be read in all the 
cathedrals, and urged the clergy to stand by their holy father in 
his defence of their liberties. Edward hurled back their defiance 
with an edict of outlawry, which effectually broke the back of 
their resistance. Denied the King's justice and bereft of the 
King's protection, desperation bred disunion, and the clerical 
party split into two camps. The Archbishop of York submitted 
with a compromise, and the friars at his back preached com- 
pliance. Winchelsea stood out to the last, and with him the 
holy Bishop of Grosteste. Their lands were seized and they were 
driven out of the kingdom. Edward, however, in one of his 
impetuous moments of half-sincere and half-dramatic reaction 
pardoned the Archbishop and restored him with every demonstra- 
tion of affection. Winchelsea used the moment to wring from 
the King a Confirmation of the Charters, thus turning an 
ecclesiastical crisis into a constitutional landmark. 

The quarrel with England was merely the prelude to the 
more serious contest in France. It had its origin in the same 
cause — the exactions of the Crown and the jealousy of the papal 
treasury. While Edward had been severe, Philip was extor- 
tionate : Edward wanted money to pay his way ; Philip demanded 
it to gratify a lust. Moreover, Philip's tone towards Boniface was 
arrogant and offensive from the beginning. The Pope's attempt 
to arbitrate in Philip's quarrel with the Count of Flanders was 
met by a lofty rebuke for interference. " Clericis laicos " was 
answered by an Ordinance forbidding the export of goods of 
value without the permission of the King — a clever device to 
provide against the outflow of wealth from France to Rome. 
Boniface, however, waived the point with unwonted leniency. 
He issued a Bull exempting France from the unpopular measure, 
as an appendix to the greater national compliment of the 
canonisation of St. Louis. The mildness of the Pope was due to 
the pressure of the Colonnas upon his political position : the 
great jubilee restored his normal temper. 

The last pilgrims had not left the streets of Rome before the 
forces began to gather against Boniface. The Fraticelli, the 
fanatical left wing of the Franciscans, and the remnant of the 
Celestinian party made common cause against him, and their 
mouthpiece, Jacopone, wrote telling satires at his expense. One 
greater than Jacopone was alienated from the papal cause by 
the old and ineffectual expedient of employing a foreign cham- 
pion to oppose an indigenous movement. Awakened by the 



196 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

noise of the Colonna scandals to the weakness of his position, 
Boniface summoned Charles of Valois, the French King's brother, 
to crush the Ghibellines of Tuscany. The Pope's " treachery " 
cost him the esteem of Dante, who went over to the cause of the 
oppressed, and gave to the " Divina Commedia " the character 
of a Ghibelline apologetic. A further cause of the weakness of 
Boniface was a political blunder into which his obstinate high- 
handedness had led him. In the course of 1297, he was called 
in to arbitrate in his private capacity, i.e. as Benedict Gaetani, 
between England and France. It was expressly understood that 
the papal office was in no way to obtrude itself in the proceed- 
ings. Boniface was, however, foolish enough to spoil a great 
opportunity by a display of official vanity. He published the 
arbitration terms in the form of a papal Bull, and thus drew 
down on himself the fury of the two kings whose confidence he 
had violated. A subsequent attempt to mediate between Eng- 
land and Scotland was consequently rejected with a curt petition 
to the Pope to confine himself to his own concerns. 

There was no longer any restraining force to hold Boniface 
and Philip back from the contest which every one must have 
known to be inevitable. The French clergy were already pour- 
ing their grievances against the King into the sympathetic ear 
of the Pope. The exiled Colonnas were fanning the flame in 
exactly the same way at the French court. Boniface exhorted 
Philip to repair the evil he had wrought. Philip's only reply 
was to enter into an open alliance with Albert of Austria, 
their bond of union being their mutual antagonism to Boniface. 
It is not necessary to look further for the causes of quarrel 
between two inflexible characters, who happen to be also the 
exponents of utterly incompatible principles. The mission of 
Bernard Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers, the object of which is un- 
known, brought the tension to breaking-point. The papal envoy 
was a tactless and turbulent person, who had already made him- 
self unpopular at the French court, and the Pope's choice of a 
representative seems too deplorable to be entirely accidental. 
Animosity broke out in a warfare of phrases, hurled at each 
other by the Pope's envoy and the King's lawyer, which ended 
in the arraignment of Saisset for treason. He was accused of 
using contemptuous language about Philip ; he had called him 
a bastard, a handsome image, and an issuer of bad money. 
Philip sent Peter Flotte to report his ill-doings to his master, 
who heard of them with equanimity. Peter drove the lesson 
home with characteristic audacity. Confronted by the Pope's 
assertions of the supremacy of the spiritual over the secular 



THE FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY 197 

power, he boldly defined the situation in the reply, "Your 
power in temporal things is a power in word, that of the King 
my master in deed". Boniface ordered Saisset to be released 
and sent to Rome ; he annulled the special privileges which 
Philip had secured in regard to Clericis Laicos, and he sum- 
moned the clergy of France to appear in Rome to accuse the 
King. 

A crude and offensive Bull was circulated widely in France to 
excite indignation, but the complaint of Boniface that fictitious 
documents were spread about in his name seems to have been 
well-founded. At anyrate it gave Philip an opportunity to write 
an answer, in which he could let himself go in an orgy of abuse 
and discourtesy. " Philip by the grace of God King of France, 
to Boniface, who assumes to be Chief Pontiff, little or no greeting. 
Let your fatuity know that in temporals we are subordinate to 
none. The collation to vacant benefices and prebends belongs 
to us by royal right ; the fruits are ours. We will maintain all 
collations made and to be made by us, and their possessors. All 
who believe otherwise we hold to be fools or madmen." The 
undisputed Greater Bull, known as Ausculta Fili, contains the 
formal indictment of Philip's offences under all their different 
heads. It was expressed in the old courteous, elusive language 
which had for generations stung emperors and kings to fury. 
The ambiguous thunder of the Old Testament phrases blended 
with the legal innovations upon which the power of the political 
Papacy rested. The tradition that Philip burned the Bull m 
probably an over-statement. He did, however, publish a bogus 
version of it, which largely accounted for the national sympathy 
with Philip's attitude. Public opinion is most clearly shown in 
the addresses to the Pope which the Estates-General drew up 
early in 1302. The first address, from the nobles to the Car- 
dinals, asserts the independence of France, and defends the 
conduct of Philip in upholding it. The Cardinals replied to it 
with moderation and dignity, and by inference made Peter Flotte 
responsible for the whole crisis. The second address, from the 
clergy to the Pope, was more respectful but equally emphatic. 
The Pope's answer is a strong testimony to his polemical skill. 
He indignantly accuses the clergy of apostacy, because they had 
timorously disobeyed the summons to Rome. "That son of 
Belial, Peter Flotte," was again made the scapegoat of Philip's 
misdoings. Finally, by a clever device, the supporters of tem- 
poral independence are accused of the dreaded heresy of Man- 
icheism — a form of abuse all the more telling because it was 
equally effective whether it was understood or not by those 



198 A SHOET HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY 

against whom it was directed. The Bull, Unam Sanctam, of 
doubtful authenticity, was issued by the same Consistory, and 
embodied the same principles in more formal language. In all 
the papal documents the point on which insistence is chiefly 
laid is the argument which Innocent III. so frequently used : the 
spiritual prerogative in no way entrenches on the temporal ; the 
two swords do not necessarily clash ; both are to be used in the 
service of Christ and His Vicar, and the royal rights of kings are 
not endangered, though their sins are of course to be punished. 
Throughout the quarrel, Boniface persistently translates the 
l political hostility of Philip ^into the spiritual rebellion of a 
; sinner. Philip's personal character laid him open to this kind 
of attack, and made it all the harder for him to parry it. His 
defeat at Courtrai and the death of Peter Flotte left him still 
further exposed. Boniface therefore lost no more time in ad- 
monition and rebuke. By a sudden reversal of his policy, he 
took Albert of Austria, now abject and servile, into his favour, 
and sent an ultimatum to Paris in the form of Twelve Articles 
J for the King's signature. The legate, however, miscalculated 
the weakness of Philip's position. France still remained on his 
side, and the able and unscrupulous Nogaret had taken the 
place of Peter Flotte in the King's confidence. Philip failed to 
clear himself of the charges to the Pope's satisfaction, and drew 
down on himself a Brief of Excommunication (April, 1303). 

Philip's anger broke forth in gusts of ineffective abuse. Two 
Parlements at the Louvre, in which Nogaret took the lead, drew 
up an indictment of Boniface which is too blustering for serious 
analysis. Nogaret charged him with being a heretic, a simoniac, 
and a criminal, and appealed against him to a General Council. 
The Ordinance of Reformation was passed at the same time, the 
real object of which was to cover a further extension of royal 
jurisdiction with a semblance of religious reform. At the second 
Parlement, a further condemnation of the Pope was carried out, 
with an absurd combination of ridiculous personal charges with 
serious political grievances. The animosity itself was genuine 
and justifiable enough, but the expression of it merely proves the 
childish impotence to which Philip and his party were reduced. 
Boniface " had publicly declared that he would rather be a 
dog, or an ass, or any brute beast rather than a Frenchman ; 
that no Frenchman had a soul which could deserve everlasting 
happiness ". A long indictment of his private life, his 
sorcery, wizardry, and incredible vices aided the charges. 
Philip took them all seriously, and Boniface found it necessary 
to clear himself by oath at Anagni, pointing at the same time 



THE FALL OF THE MEDIEVAL PAPACY 199 

to Philip's reception of the Colonnas as the undoubted origin of 
the attack. 

But the fury of Philip once aroused could not be easily- 
allayed, and behind the verbose attack of the Parlement, a plot 
of consummate audacity was being formed. Philip had through- 
out the quarrel made a point of collecting in his camp every one 
who had a grievance against the Pope. Bribes were scattered. 
among the Italian landlords who had been ousted by the re- 
lations of Boniface. Nearly all the lesser barons revolted 
against their new overlords, and the Gaetani power spread all 
across Southern Italy. Even in the college itself, Philip was 
able to find adherents. In September, 1303, William of Nogaret 
and Sciarra Colonna entered Anagni, where the old Pope was 
residing, with cries of " Death to Pope Boniface ! Long live King 
Philip ! " The town made no resistance, but the Pope's nephews 
boldly defended his palace. The successful conspirators gave 
the Pope nine hours in which to submit, but all the fighting 
spirit of an old warrior came to Boniface in his hour of need. 
At the end of the appointed time, his defenders capitulated, 
and his servants forsook him. The two conspirators, pursu- 
ing their way through the deserted palace, found a calm and 
dignified figure seated on the papal throne in full pontifical 
vestments, his head bowed over a golden cross, and in his 
hands the dreaded keys. The rebel Cardinal sprang forward 
to murder him, but the more cautious lawyer held him back. 
With deliberate heroism, Boniface maintained his dignity, an- 
swering their insults with his " majestic silence," and their 
menaces with his contempt of death. He was confined in his 
palace, while Philip's mercenaries sacked his treasures ; but his 
dramatic stand had done its work. The French coups d'etat 
had stunned, but not paralysed, the papal party. News of the 
Pope's desperate situation was carried to Rome with the inspir- 
ing story of his courage. Those who had been impervious to 
French influence, whose interests were bound up with the Gae- 
tani fortunes, joined with Cardinal Fieschi in an expedition to 
the Pope's rescue. The brutality of Nogaret and Sciarra and the 
heroism of Boniface produced a reaction. The French conspir- 
ators contrived to escape before the relieving force had made its 
way into the palace. Boniface was conducted to Rome in 
triumph, after forgiving all his enemies with a mildness born of 
misfortune. But he was never more a prisoner than in the hour 
of his deliverance. Those who had been his rescuers now made 
themselves his master. The Orsini dictated his policy, and the 
Colonna menaced him in the distance. 



200 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

He died in October, 1303, at the age of 86, heart-broken by 
compulsory submission to a domination which all his life he 
was accustomed to exercise over others. With him fell the 
great mediaeval Papacy. He had tried to carry its pretensions 
too high when already they had reached a dangerous eminence. 
He consistently pressed a theory, which no longer covered the 
facts, to its logical conclusion and beyond it. " He had striven 
for a goal which had already become fantastic." 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF 
THE INTELLECTUAL REVIVAL, a.d. 1303-1334 

THE disaster of Anagni. like every other historical mile- 
stone, indicates two directions, the past and the future. 
For the past, it was retributive. As the victory of 
Canossa had expressed the supreme moment of the mediaeval 
Papacy, so the defeat of Anagni announced to the world its 
failure. But the triumph of Philip over Boniface does not 
merely suggest a retrospect. It is equally eloquent of the way 
which was still untrodden. We no longer think of the Reforma- 
tion as a sudden cataclysm which overthrew the power of the 
Popes in the sixteenth century and hurled half of Europe into 
the vortex of Protestantism. Nor do we regard it as a capricious 
act of divine deliverance which saved the age of Luther from 
spiritual bondage. It is possible to trace, in the circumstances 
which group themselves round the Anagni tragedy, all the 
forces already at work which hereafter came together in the 
Reformation movement. It is true that these circumstances 
were for the most part independent of one another, and it does 
not seem to have often occurred to their representatives to make 
common cause against a common foe. But isolated acts of 
defiance had already come from most of the quarters in which 
the storm finally broke. The investiture wars had dealt blows 
at the moral prestige of individual Popes from which the Papacy 
could never recover. The forces of nationality had asserted 
themselves successfully in more than one rebellion against the 
papal theory of Christian unity. Theorists of all kinds — 
schoolmen, philosophers, and poets — were already at work 
exposing the supreme unreason which underlay the papal view 
of the world. Lastly, it was the bitterness of the new Pope, 
Benedict XL, to realise that the weapons of the spiritual 
prerogative had lost their power by too frequent and inappro- 
priate use. 

In the last personal duel between a great Pope and a great 
temporal Prince, the King of France had won his victory in 

201 



202 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

spite of anathema, excommunication, and the direst papal 
thunder. What was worse — his subjects had supported him and 
associated themselves with him in sacrilege. Worst of all, the 
outrage of Anagni had failed to shock the world or to create the 
reaction which Churchmen had anticipated in the mind of 
Christendom at large. Benedict found it impossible even to 
carry into effect his condemnation of the rebels. He was obliged 
to release the Colonna from the ban, and to restore the lands of 
all except the arch-traitor Sciarra. Philip le Bel made a formal 
declaration of innocence in regard to the plot, which nobody 
believed, but which the Pope himself felt it expedient not to 
dispute. In 1304, Benedict was compelled to revoke the decrees 
against the King which his predecessor had passed, and to 
associate himself with Philip in condemning the acts of Boniface 
which had led to the quarrel. In May the same year, Benedict 
promulgated the decrees of absolution together with a modi- 
fication of Clericis Laicos. A poor shadow of a Pope, gentle 
and yielding in disposition, he remained in Rome to rule with 
what authority he could, under the dictation of the Orsini, 
while he was harassed on the one hand by the Colonna and on 
the other by the Gaetani. Finally his position became intolerable. 
In July he fled to Perugia, and with a burst of daring as 
ineffective as his earlier complacence, he issued fierce Bulls of 
condemnation against Philip and the leading conspirators. He 
was rewarded with instant death, whether from poison or from 
overstrung nerves history gives no certain verdict. His ponti- 
ficate had merely served to prove the extent of the papal defeat. 

The long vacancy which followed was due to strife between 
the French and Italian parties in the College. The truce which 
was arranged after eleven months adopted a complicated 
principle which promised to satisfy both parties. The Italian 
party were allowed to make the nomination provided that the 
candidate should be a Frenchman. Three French Bishops were 
accordingly found, all of whom, in spite of their nationality, 
were partisans of Boniface VIII. against Philip. The French 
party made the best of it, and left Philip to come to an under- 
standing with the least objectionable of the three nominees. 
This was Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux, who became 
Pope as Clement V. (1305-1313). 

During the coronation of Clement at Lyons, a wall fell and 
knocked off his crown, from which the papal carbuncle was 
lost. His ill-fated pontificate thus opened under an evil omen. 
Under Clement the political calamity befell the Papacy to which 
Petrarch gave the name of the Babylonish captivity. His 



THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 203 

predecessor had found it impossible to remain at Rome under 
present conditions. Heavy as were the disadvantages of de- 
pendence on the King of France — a dependence which seemed 
to be inevitable — Clement thought that he might just as well 
avail himself of its possible advantages. After some aimless 
wandering in the south of France, he fixed his headquarters at 
Avignon — not strictly a French town, belonging as it did to 
Charles II. of Naples as Count of Provence, and yet within the 
radius of French protection. The dissociation of the Papacy 
from the Eternal City might have been expected to produce 
a greater immediate catastrophe than it actually did. At first, 
however, it made comparatively little difference to the political 
position of the Papacy. Weak as the Pope was in Avignon, he 
could not have been stronger in Rome, for Rome was ablaze with 
a three-cornered faction fight, and Philip had every inducement 
to fan the flame in order to perpetuate the humiliation of the 
Papacy. 

Once more the Pope had fallen into the disastrous posi- 
tion of a protege, and the situation was the more humiliating 
since his protector disdained the traditional disguise of the 
armed friend, and assumed openly the demeanour of a victorious 
foe. Clement would much rather have had nothing to do with 
Philip, whose snares were so cunningly laid about him. This 
being impossible, he encamped under his shadow, made apparent 
surrender, and at the same time watched for an opportunity to 
extract whatever benefits he could from his uncomfortable 
situation. It was really quite a good choice — from every point 
of view except that of the idealist, and his voice could be 
ignored, for as yet it seldom reached the Curia. Avignon was 
not French, and yet under French influence, although it did not 
at present belong to the Papacy, it was close to the Venaissin 
which had been owned by the Popes since 1228. 

The one subject of supreme importance to Clement V., and 
for which he was prepared to make any concession was the 
vindication of the memory of Boniface VIII. The theory of 
spiritual power had to be saved at whatever cost of political 
sacrifice. It was the theory itself which was on its trial in the 
reign of Boniface — the theory pushed to unwise conclusions and 
unhappily involved in political and personal causes. The 
problem before Clement was to abandon the temporary and 
inessential, or in other words, the political quarrel, and to hold 
fast to the vital principle which Philip's defiance had so terribly 
imperilled. Happily, Philip also had his requirements, and 
Clement could with careful management set up a diplomatic 



204 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

barter. Philip wanted the Empire for his brother Charles, and 
he chose to imagine, or to assume that Clement could bestow it 
at his discretion. Clement found it convenient to let him think 
so, but at the same time he had no intention of so dangerously- 
adding to the preponderance of France in Europe. His 
manoeuvres would not have discredited an age of riper diplomacy. 
He contrived to allow Philip to imagine that he was throwing all 
his influence on to the scale in favour of Charles's candidature, 
while at the same time he was encouraging the German princes 
to elect in a manner much more favourable to their own 
interests. The election of Henry VII. as King of the Romans 
consequently appeared to have been carried through in spite of 
the Pope, who with the support of Philip proceeded to lay down 
extensive conditions as a preliminary to the coronation. 

The Emperor-elect felt that double-dealing was in the air, but 
he was not shrewd enough to detect its origin. At the same 
time, he was irritated by the Pope's demands, and in particular 
by the oath of vassalage which Clement insisted upon as a 
symbol of Imperial vassalage. Henry was foolish and precipi- 
tate: he hurried into Italy, where Robert of Naples was busy 
upholding the rights of the Pope against his Ghibelline rebels. 
In 1312, Henry forced the Cardinals to crown him in the Lateran, 
while Robert held St. Peter's against him in the name of the 
Pope. But he was not strong enough to carry through a coup 
d'&tat, and after a few flashes of success he withdrew from Italy, 
leaving disappointment and democratic revolution in his train. 
Henry VII. appears in the "Paradiso" as the hope of the 
Ghibellines to whom Dante had looked in 1300 as a destined 
deliverer of Italy : it is not the portrait as known to history of 
the ineffective leader who returned after a fruitless expedition to 
die in his own country in 1313. 

Clement had managed to deny the Empire to France without 
quarrelling with Philip, and now a more urgent project called for 
new concessions from the Pope for the gratification of the King. 
Philip owed enormous sums of money to the aristocratic Order 
of the Knights Templar. It is probable that their general, Du 
Molay, had been impolitic in pressing for repayment. This in 
itself was enough to cause their ruin, for Philip was not a 
merciful debtor. But the cataract of charges which fell on their 
heads cannot have had a purely fictitious source. The Order 
was a survival from an age when chivalry was more pure and 
ideals were more ingenuous. It had outlived its usefulness, and 
allowing for the animosity of Philip, the trial and condemna- 
tion of the knights was probably an instance of a necessary 



THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 205 

reform barbarously carried out. It was also the price paid by 
Clement for the vindication of the memory of Boniface. Con- 
demned by the King in 1307, and by General Council in 1311, the 
Order was finally abolished by the Pope in the Council of Vienna 
in April, 1312. 

The Council of Vienna had three big subjects to deal with, 
and Clement showed his astuteness in his manipulation of the 
interplay between them. He suspended his verdict on the 
Templars while he wearied Philip by the long-winded negotia- 
tions connected with the trial of Boniface. The third subject, 
that of ecclesiastical reform, Clement attacked with a surprising 
amount of enthusiasm, stimulated by a sound political instinct 
for moral decency. The scandals of the Curia were more con- 
spicuous at Avignon than in Rome, and the eyes of Europe were 
focussed on the little town with more than casual interest. 
Accordingly, the last energies of Clement were spent in rigorously 
checking ecclesiastical abuses, the oppression of monks by 
Bishops, the immoral lives of priests, and their worldly habits, 
to which contemporary literature bears abundant testimony. 

Clement died in April, 1314; his memory was loathed by 
his political opponents as that of " an astute and dishonest 
politician," but it was reserved for later generations to execrate 
him as the author of the Babylonish captivity. 

The Conclave which met at Carpentras to elect Clement's 
successor had more than the ordinary difficulties to cope with. 
Everybody knew that the problem was momentous. The Italian 
Cardinals clamoured loudly for an Italian Pope and the restora- 
tion of the Papacy to Rome. The French Cardinals, who were 
in the majority, were equally determined to keep the Papacy in 
France, and among them the Gascon element prevailed. Mean- 
while pillage and violence made the proceedings impossible. 
The Gascons showed by their behaviour on this occasion that 
they knew what was expected of the public when an election 
was held in their midst, and the forcible detention of the 
Cardinals at Lyons by the French King was necessary to induce 
them to conclude their business. Their choice fell, in August, 
1316, on the old Cardinal of Portus, a middle-class Gascon who 
had risen by the favour of Robert of Naples and by a certain 
kind of useful ability which had brought him into prominence 
at the Council of Vienna. 

The pontificate of John XXII. seems to have won a greater 
notoriety than its events can easily account for. He has been 
made the scapegoat for the offences with which posterity loaded 
the Avignon Popes, and he was unfortunate enough to be a 



206 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

conspicuous target in an epoch of literary redundance. For he 
opened the last and least worthy phase of the old Imperial 
contest. The struggle for the Empire ended in the decisive 
victory of Lewis of Bavaria at Miihldorf in 1322. This provoked 
the animosity of the Pope, who had meant to control the events 
by arbitration. John summoned Lewis to appear before the 
Curia, claiming the antiquated right of decision in cases of 
dispute. Lewis felt strong enough to refuse, and he was con- 
sequently excommunicated. The struggle which these pro- 
ceedings opened lasted until the death of Lewis in 1347. It 
was not worthy of the traditions which earlier contests had 
bequeathed. There is none of the old splendour of the Hohen- 
staufen feud, although the world at large was much more 
interested in it, and the events were watched and reported with 
far more contemporary excitement. In the small and complex 
motives of John XXII. we miss the extravagant magnificence of 
Hildebrand, and the vindictive parries of Lewis bear no compari- 
son with the splendid defiance of earlier Emperors. And yet, 
Lewis set out with advantages which his predecessors had lacked. 
The Avignon Papacy, if not altogether discredited, was un- 
doubtedly in disrepute. Abuses which had passed unnoticed in 
Rome were notorious scandals in the Venaissin, and Christendom 
did not hide its outraged feelings. The critical and defensive 
spirit showed itself in England, in the Statutes of Provisors and 
Praemunire, and in Germany by the passing of the decrees of 
1338, which laid down the doctrine that a legally chosen 
Emperor needs no further confirmation, holding his powers from 
God alone. 

Another difference between the present contest and the 
earlier ones lay in the fact that doctrinal differences were in- 
volved in it. It is this which gives it so much of the character 
of the Reformation itself. It also accounts to a great extent for 
its extraordinary importance in literature. A schism among the 
Franciscans had arisen on the subject of apostolic poverty. 
John XXII. , at the expense of his reputation, opposed the 
Fraticelli or Spiritual Franciscans, and held to a more modified 
view of the apostolic injunction, which was less inconsistent 
with the luxurious character of the Avignon court and with the 
personal avarice of the Pope himself. He was supported by the 
Dominicans in condemning as heretics the Fraticelli, who in their 
turn gave their support to the Emperor Lewis. Another theo- 
logical war was waged in defence of the doctrine of the Beatific 
Vision, which nearly broke the connection between the Papacy 
and France. John laid down the doctrine that the dead are not 



THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 207 

admitted to the presence of God until after the Day of Judgment. 
Storms of opposition greeted his assertion and he was obliged in 
the end to retract it on his deathbed. To the men of the four- 
teenth century theology was not only an absorbing study, it was 
also the recognised mental exercise and fashionable amusement. 
So round the contest of Lewis of Bavaria with the Papacy there 
gathered metaphysical storm-clouds and among the ranks of the 
warriors we find the thinkers, sacred and profane, doctrinaires 
and theologians, who delighted to bring their opinions on to the 
battlefield or rejoiced to find a market for them in the camp of 
Lewis or at the court of Avignon. 

Before the struggle with Philip le Bel had stripped the 
glamour from the mediaeval Papacy, Thomas Aquinas gave a new 
meaning to history by interpreting it in the light of Aristotle's 
teleology. The mediaeval Empire had died a lingering death 
with the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen : the ghost which 
survived it was being raffled among insignificant princes. It 
was to come to life again hereafter as the white elephant of the 
House of Hapsburg. In the attempt of the Popes to usurp the 
glories of their defeated rivals, the forces by which they had 
won recoiled upon themselves. The abuses which had been 
heaped upon the theory of the Empire could apply quite as well 
to the temporal power of the Papacy. Innocent III. showed 
that he realised this danger when he insisted that the Emperor, 
although subordinate to the Pope, was not subordinate to any- 
one else. But the doorway to criticism was open when Thomas 
Aquinas stood on the threshold, and directed the old contro- 
versies into the new highway of political philosophy. He 
introduced a new way of approaching the old problems by 
defending the power of the Popes on the basis of teleology. 
"The State comes into existence," says Aristotle, "originating 
in the needs of life, and continues in existence for the sake of 
good life " (" Politics," i. 2). If the end of government is the good 
life of the governed, then, according to Aquinas, the supreme 
authority of the Papacy is not only justifiable, but essential, in 
order that men should believe rightly. For the one essential 
condition for " the good life," to the mediaeval mind, was a right 
faith. As the guardians of "the good life" the Popes need fear 
no rival, but for their secular defenders they must look — not to 
the effete and once presumptuous Empire — but to the rising 
spirit of nationality. This new philosophical basis of papal 
power was stronger than the old Biblical warrants which the 
Popes had been wont to produce. Controversy had already 
shown that texts could be applied by human ingenuity in more 



208 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

ways than one. And yet the defence of St. Thomas is most con- 
vincing where it is least needed ; it was not in its capacity of 
guardian of "the good life" that the Papacy most required 
vindication, and the time was not far distant when the words of 
Aristotle, applied to the Avignon Popes, would sound like irony. 

Thomas Aquinas had not stemmed the tide of criticism : 
he had merely diverted its stream. Dante, writing his " De 
Monarchia" a little later, reverted to the older method in his 
counter-attack, but the spirit which he infused into his anti- 
quated argument is somehow alive and modern. He grounds 
his support of the Empire on Christ's historic birth under the 
Roman Empire, which, he maintains, gave divine sanction once 
and for all to the Imperial principle, and precluded the Church 
from its claim to dominion. " De Monarchia" was not a very 
successful pamphlet : it was an attempt " to exchange one 
impossible theory for another equally impossible," and the 
system which it advocated had too lately fallen for an im- 
mediate revival. But Dante's political theory is more important 
than his contribution to contemporary history : it reveals a 
sense of the dignity of human nature which carries it into the 
atmosphere of the " Divina Commedia ". Naturally, Dante pre- 
serves in his political writings the poet's faculty of ennobling 
politics, and his views are not the less interesting because they 
are representative rather than revolutionary. 

At this point the interaction of politics and theology pro- 
duced a literary storm. iEgidio Colonna showed that both the 
rival powers came independently from God, and John of Paris 
used this useful theory to prove that the Pope had no right to 
control the policy of France. Now, as ever, Paris was in the 
forefront of the intellectual movement, and the fearless delicacy 
of the Latin mind was busy denning and interpreting the various 
phases of the dawning Reformation. The imagination of Du 
Bois exalted the kingdom of France to the supremacy which 
Empire and Papacy had forfeited. His remarkable books register 
the first protest against the double use of Scriptural texts, in 
their literal and their metaphorical application, as historical 
arguments in the great contest. It was Michael of Cesena, the 
general of the Franciscan Order, who definitely linked the 
philosophical dispute to the theological quarrel, by attacking 
the Papacy on Franciscan principles, appealing to "the uni- 
versal Church and General Council, which in faith and morals 
is superior to any Pope ". It is easy to understand the fierce 
intolerance felt by these early Socialists for the existent hier- 
archy and all its works. The Church had lost its hold on the 



THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 209 

poor, and the world's accumulation of suffering unheeded cried 
aloud against Avignon as a travesty of the Christian ideal. 
The result was that the men of the early fourteenth century 
turned more and more to first principles, examining the founda- 
tions of Catholicism in the light of the stupendous inconsis- 
tency. William of Ockham, the " invincible doctor," turned 
aside from the path of scholastic theology to take up the 
absorbing problem, claiming by his "Dialogues" and "Tractates" 
a direct influence on the sixteenth century. His work is a 
curious mixture of general principles and details of conflict. 
Much of his argument is merely a restatement of the case 
against John XXII. from the Franciscan point of view. He 
does not pretend to offer a complete system, but his chief con- 
tribution consists in the attempt to distinguish between the 
temporal or earthly element in the Catholic ideal, and the 
divine and eternal truth underlying it. 

In William's disciple and literary forerunner, Marsiglio of 
Padua, the literary war reached its culminating point. Among 
the group of great thinkers who were his contemporaries, he 
alone stands out as a prophet, one to whom to-day was as clear 
as yesterday, and from whom to-morrow has much to learn. 
He, with his colleague, John of Jandun, both professors of Paris, 
brought forward in 1326 " Defensor Pacis " — a treatise in poli- 
tical philosophy which foreshadows the main principles of 
modern political thought. In 1327, they both left the university, 
and offered then- intellects and energies to Lewis of Bavaria, 
who had good sense enough to appreciate the value of the gifts 
which they brought him. From that point Marsiglio became 
the inspiration of a policy foredoomed to failure by the hopeless 
inefficiency of the men to whom it was entrusted. Like the 
condottieri of the next period, the philosophers of the fourteenth 
century sent their powers to market, and in an age when 
intellect was marketable, they seldom met with rejection. Lewis 
had more mental ability than force of character. He eagerly 
adopted Marsiglio's suggestion that he should fight the Pope with 
the Pope's own weapons. Other Emperors, such as Frederick II., 
had come to grief because they had answered craft with violence, 
words with deeds. Let Lewis wage intellectual war on John from 
a position equally tenable, with weapons equally strong, and 
as yet untarnished by age-long use. In his contest with the 
Franciscans, John had used equivocal language, to which a 
little skill could give an heretical interpretation. He was 
personally unpopular, and officially defamed: the eyes of 
Europe looked askance at Avignon. Thomas Aquinas had 

14 



210 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

made Aristotle a bulwark of papal power : Marsiglio used him 
as a battering-ram. He accepts the teleological view of the 
State as a community with an end, the good life, but he goes on 
to make the extraordinarily modern discovery that the legislator 
is the people, from whom the ruler derives his authority as by 
a tacit investiture. As to the ruler himself, Marsiglio is modern 
enough to leave the question open. Unity there must be, but 
unity of office and not necessarily in number : a committee could 
serve the purpose, but perhaps on the whole a king is best. 

So far, " Defensor Pacis " shines like a beacon across the cen- 
turies, warning the world of changes to come and lightening the 
surroundings with the flame of discovery. But the most im- 
portant part of his argument passed unchallenged at the time. 
After three and a half centuries Locke reached the same point 
by a more circuitous route, and Rousseau carried the argument 
further to its logical conclusion. But the contemporaries of 
Marsiglio were more interested in him as a pamphleteer, and it 
is to the temporary application of his argument that he owes 
his fame in the practical world. The Pope, the hierarchy, and 
all the paraphernalia of spiritual power were outside his political 
system : they were the friction which disturbed the normal 
political life — the enemies of the peace which the de facto ruler, 
the Emperor, was there to defend. Their rights had been seized 
and not conferred: Christ had neither exercised nor bestowed 
"coercive jurisdiction " among the Apostles, and so far from the 
priests exerting this right, the lay authority ought to appoint 
and control the priesthood. The power of the Pope rested on 
no valid Scriptural authority, but on the respect which Rome had 
inherited from the Roman Empire. It was not even justified 
by success, for the rule of the Popes had not contributed to the 
general good, and its failure was written large on the walls of 
Avignon. 

If we compare Marsiglio with other thinkers of the Middle 
Ages, it is at first surprising that a man of such outstanding 
genius should have affected so little the course of contemporary 
thought. William of Ockham, with far less penetration of 
insight, is much more often quoted, and his narrower doctrines 
found a wider acceptance among his political partisans. It is 
probable that William evolved his theory out of his politics, 
whereas it is obvious that Marsiglio, in identifying himself with 
Lewis and his cause, was seeking an expression of a philosophical 
ideal. His criticism of the papal position was only one depart- 
ment, and that a subordinate one, of his view of the universe. 
But in 1326, a philosophical system was incomparably less 



THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 211 

important than a good argument against the Pope. So the 
founders of Protestantism sought among the narrower doctrines 
of William of Ockham and found what they wanted, while they 
left the broad and confident truths of Marsiglio of Padua for a 
more adventurous age to explore. 

Of course the fire of the critics was returned from the papal 
camp. Unfortunately for John XXII. , his champions, in their 
frantic efforts to find something new to say — some argument 
which had not already spent its force — were driven to unwise 
and absurd exaggeration. Agostino Trionfo and Alvaro Pelago 
restated the fiction of the Donation, and tried to prove the validity 
of the Translation of the Empire from the unquestionable actual- 
ity of the coronation of Charlemagne. The Pope, it was argued, 
could not have transferred what was not, in the first place, his. 
Trionfo wrote a book dedicated to John XXII. in which papal 
pretension was made ridiculous in the eyes of Europe by the 
strain to which it was exposed. The Pope's judgment was the 
judgment of God, and the whole existence of the civil state was 
on sufferance by ecclesiastical consent. It was impossible that 
such arguments could bridge the gulf which had already opened 
between John XXII. and Lewis of Bavaria, while they merely 
acted as fuel to the fire of literary enthusiasm. 

The coup d'etat of Lewis which Marsiglio had planned 
proved a disastrous failure. He was to put his views into effect 
by an expedition to Rome — to take Italy into his confidence for 
a concerted attack on the Papacy. Up to a certain point, Italy 
was with him. The Roman people welcomed him as Senator, 
with their hearts inflamed against the Pope who had deserted 
them. In January, 1328, he was anointed by two schismatic 
Bishops, and crowned in the name of the Roman people by that 
useful rebel, Sciarra Colonna. It seemed as if Rome meant to 
excel itself to do honour to the democratic Emperor. And yet, 
in spite of the processions and banquets, and the elaborate care 
in preserving the customary ritual, the democratic coronation 
fell rather flat. Perhaps there is always a certain lack of dignity 
in a democratic pageant, arising from some inherent inconsist- 
ency between the ideal and its expression. Or it may be that 
Lewis did not really quite believe in what he was doing. It is 
certain that many of the witnesses felt qualms, in spite of the 
brave words of defiance, and Villani, the historian, expressed a 
prevalent opinion in the following words : " In this manner was 
Lewis the Bavarian crowned Emperor by the people of Rome, to 
the great disgrace and offence of the Pope and the Holy Church. 
What presumption in the accursed Bavarian! Nowhere in 



212 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

history do we find that an Emperor, however hostile to the Pope 
he may have been before, or may afterwards have become, ever 
allowed himself to be crowned by anyone but the Pope or his 
legates, with the single exception of this Bavarian; and the 
fact excited great astonishment." (Villani, x., 55. Quoted by 
Greg., bk. xi., ch. 3.) 

John XXII. left none of the usual stones unturned in oppos- 
ing Lewis, but his real advantage lay in the Emperor's striking 
inefficiency, and his conspicuous power of wasting time. Lewis 
was also harassed on all sides by his supporters, and he lacked 
the powers necessary to control the democratic forces which 
were driving him on. The Romans insisted on his deposing 
John XXII. and stipulated that future Popes should not leave 
Rome, except for the three summer months, without the per- 
mission of the Roman people. A senseless persecution of the 
clergy was carried on in Rome, in spite of the presence of 
Marsiglio of Padua, the discoverer of toleration. Finally, the 
Minorites clamoured for an anti-pope, and secured one in Peter 
of Corbara, who, in May, 1328, took the name of Nicholas V. 
Peter, the unworthy follower of Celestine V., showed from the 
first a complete inaptitude for the part of anti-pope. He spent 
his short months of power in blustering against the Avignon 
Pope : at the first sign of danger he fled, and when he was 
sold back to his enemies he grovelled for mercy, to end his in- 
glorious life in an Avignon prison three years after his sub- 
mission. 

Everything went against Lewis from the moment of his 
departure from Rome in August, 1328. While the Neapolitan 
forces, under King Robert, were recovering Rome and the Cam- 
pagna for John XXII. , Lewis dawdled about preparing suits 
against the Papacy, and fitfully asserting his power in North 
Italy. The picturesque and successful criminal, Castruccio 
Castracane, tyrant of Lucca, died in September in the course of 
a quarrel with Lewis which threatened to break up the unity of 
the Ghibelline party. Foremost among the Ghibelline leaders 
who had invited Lewis to Italy, Castruccio had encroached on 
the Emperor's own rights, and, at his death, Lewis was involved 
in a fight with his sons over the possession of Florence and Pisa. 
At this critical moment a mutiny broke out among the Imperial 
troops. Rinaldo d'Este and Azzo Visconti, fearing to suffer the 
fate of the Castracani, submitted to Avignon, and thus withdrew 
from Lewis the allegiance of Ferrara and of Milan. Further 
deaths among the Ghibelline tyrants, and among them that of 
Sciarra Colonna, convinced Lewis that he was beaten, and con- 



THE BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY 213 

firmed John XXII. in the impression that Heaven was on his 
side. Lewis left Italy, Rome tendered its submission to John, 
and the anti-pope appeared at Avignon with a cord round his 
neck. It was not surprising that, in 1330, the Pope could afford 
to take a high line with the Emperor ; the offer of Lewis to de- 
pose the anti-pope was met by a stinging retort which must 
have sealed his humiliation. 

At this point, history seems to be full of surprising personali- 
ties, whose meteoric careers shed a fictitious brilliance across 
the narrative. Among these, the knight-errant, John of 
Bohemia, was conspicuous, and his chivalrous expedition to 
recover Italy for the Pope, relieves the inglorious story of the 
last struggle between the Empire and Papacy. His sudden and 
unexplained appearance, the panic which he struck among the 
Ghibelline tyrants, the brave exploits of his 16-year-old son, 
and the mysterious failure in which he vanished " like smoke" 
across the Alps — these things thread with colour a narrative 
otherwise lacking in interest. 

If Lewis was not born to succeed, neither was John XXII. 
All the pettiness of a subtle nature was his, and his reign 
smouldered out in an incompleteness more inglorious than 
failure. Romagna was imperfectly subdued, and the Gascon 
regents whom John appointed, and particularly his nephew 
Beltram, were a cause of growing irritation. In 1334, Bologna 
openly rebelled, and the citizens raised the cry of " Death to the 
legate and the men of Languedoc". The spiritual forces also 
gathered against the disappointed old worldling: another ex- 
pedition of Flagellants under Fra Venturino stirred Italy against 
him, and his last act was the condemnation of its leader at 
Avignon. John XXII. died in December, 1334, at the age of 
90. His pontificate bore the impress of his own character. It 
had passed in an unworthy struggle for an outworn and worth- 
less dominion, and such as it was it had failed to conclude it. 
He was a pedantic-minded lawyer, who might have led a useful 
life in a mediaeval university or a provincial town. As Pope, he 
had sown doctrinal discord in the world, just as Boniface VIII. 
had sown political strife, and, in doing so, he had robbed the 
Catholic Church of her dignity in the eyes of Europe. His very 
virtues lacked distinction : his scholarship was narrow and 
dogmatic, his personal simplicity counterbalanced by his enor- 
mous riches exposed him to the charge of avarice, while his 
pugnacity was not justified by a successful military policy. 
Papal history cannot afford to be lenient to John XXII. , for, in 
his reign, the Reformation as an intellectual movement began. 



214 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

It would be absurd to hold him responsible for the spirit of 
criticism which dominated his age, but contemporary Church- 
men must have had good reason to regret that the sword- thrusts 
of the enemy could so easily get home through the weaknesses 
in the character of the Pope and his court. 



CHAPTER XX 

WHEN ISRAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT, a.d. 1334-1370 

BY the time of the death of John XXII., the Popes had 
thoroughly exhausted the advantages of the Avignon 
position. From 1334 onwards the interest of the story 
lies in the growing attraction towards Rome and the gradual 
extrication from the toils of French bondage. For seven years 
Benedict XII. (1335-1342) gave himself with single-hearted zeal 
to the task of uprooting the evils which John XXII. had sown. 
He did everything that an upright strong man could do, but 
success was not within his reach. There seemed good hope of 
ending the weary struggle with Lewis at the beginning of his 
reign. But Lewis, though he was subservient enough on most 
points, clung obstinately to his alliance with England, and 
Philip VI. threatened to treat Benedict worse than his grand- 
father had treated Boniface VIII. if he gave way to the ally of 
the enemy of France. Benedict dared not oppose Philip, and 
this fresh proof of the " captivity " of the Pope so far improved 
the position of the Emperor that in 1338 the Declaration of 
Reuse gave constitutional confirmation to the advanced Ghibel- 
line doctrine, that the Emperor derived his title from God alone, 
and that whoever was elected King of the Romans could use 
Imperial rights without waiting for papal sanction. Of course 
the actual circumstances belied the brave words, for the Empire 
was never more powerless, and the Papacy had many another 
humiliation to impose upon it. But the Declaration of Reuse, 
as a spontaneous protest against interference, is a more im- 
portant national document than a charter of liberty would be, if 
proclaimed by a strong Emperor at the zenith of his power. 

Unfortunately for Lewis, he had no sense of " the tide in the 
affairs of men," and a few years later he created a reaction 
against himself by his folly in dissolving the marriage of 
Margaret Maultasch in order that she might marry his own son. 
He could plead with perfect justice that he was only carrying 
the theories of Marsiglio one step further in thus acting as if he 
was the fountain of morality. But his supporters were not yet 
prepared to see spiritual powers wielded by a layman : they would 

215 



216 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

follow him in asserting his rights against the capricious policy 
of the Avignon Popes, but when he began to adopt the Pope's 
own evil ways — to use a more than doubtful spiritual authority 
to serve an end which was frankly worldly, the weakness of the 
Emperor's position stood revealed. For the first time the views 
of Marsiglio and Ockham began to be regarded as dangerous, 
and Europe, now on its guard, was slow in giving its allegiance 
to the new principles. Where Benedict had failed as a peace- 
maker his successor was not likely to succeed. Clement VI. was 
not a man of compromise : he pursued the unfortunate Emperor 
back across all the ground he had won, made him unsay all his 
rash words of defiance, and, finally, set up Charles of Bohemia 
against him. Lewis died in 1347, having spent his fitful energies 
in the most futile of all the struggles between the Empire and 
the Papacy. Charles IV. outlived him, but he never managed 
to assert himself against the Popes, whose creature he was, and 
Germany treated him accordingly. 

More than once Benedict XII. had tried to effect the return 
to Rome. But he failed, as his three successors were to fail, 
owing to the strength of the pressure of France on the one hand, 
and, on the other, the natural reluctance of the Cardinals to go 
back to the city of anarchy. So Italy was left in the hands of 
the Ghibelline tyrants, and the bitterness of the land against 
the Popes increased in proportion as the evils of tyranny and 
private war oppressed it. A pathetic confidence is expressed in 
Italian literature of the time, that, if only the Popes were to 
return, all would be well with Italy. The memory of Latin 
countries is short-lived and forgiving. In the consciousness of 
present evils past troubles were forgotten. The great Popes had 
given Italy golden days of renown; they had made Rome the 
heart of the world and upheld the tradition of her " eternity ". 
In the remembrance of these things the wars which had de- 
vastated Italy were forgotten : so were the extortions of the Curia 
and the scandals which had already defamed the Vatican court. 
But the sighs of the Romans, though not unheeded, were in 
vain, and Petrarch, his heart aflame with worship and pity for 
Rome, flung his poetic appeals to Avignon, believing that the 
Pope had only to know of Italy's suffering in order to come and 
deliver her. With consternation the news reached Rome in 
1339 that Benedict was building a great palace in Avignon, and 
that French craftsmen were at work adorning it : it confirmed 
their worst fears, for it seemed as though the domination of 
France was not after all an episode in papal history, but a con- 
summated revolution. 



WHEN ISEAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 217 

The Babylonish captivity had the strange effect of arousing 
in the Romans a sense of civic dignity, partly genuine and 
largely artificial, founded on an epidemic of antiquarianism and 
personified in the fantastic figure of Cola di Rienzi. Clement VI. 
(1342-1352) found himself more firmly established than ever in 
the neighbourhood of France, and the Romans turned, in their 
sense of desertion, to li the tragic actor in the tattered purple of 
antiquity". In 1342, a strange and beautiful young man ap- 
peared at Avignon as an envoy from the Roman people, to 
implore Clement to return. Though his mission was unsuc- 
cessful, for Rienzi, the messenger, it was a personal triumph. 
His wonderful language and his strange magnetic charm won 
the worldling Pope, who sent him back to Rome high in favour 
as a papal notary and in the company of a papal Vicar, thus 
enabling him to claim the approval of Avignon for his earliest 
exploits. The career of Rienzi belongs to the civic history of 
Rome, but the amazing success of his irregular dictatorship at 
the opening, and the social upheaval caused by his eventual 
failure, show how strong were the rival forces with which the 
Papacy had to contend. The Romans had been living for 
centuries under conditions which were calculated to rob them 
of all political self-respect. And yet, in spite of their dependence 
on the Popes, alternating as it did with periods of oppression by 
the baronage, they had never quite forgotten the civic heritage 
which came to them from a remoter past. This consciousness, 
which was kept alive by the palaces of the Palatine Hill and 
the temples of the Forum, was always breaking out in eruptions 
of more or less genuine democratic revolt. Three times in 
history these movements extended beyond the civic policy of 
Rome : the revolution inspired by Arnold of Brescia in the 
twelfth century involved the Emperor and the Pope, and its 
consequences were felt throughout Europe. In the fifteenth 
century Stephen Porcara conducted a conspiracy against Pope 
Nicholas V. in the name of civic liberty which for the mo- 
ment overthrew the political balance of Italy. But the most 
astonishing and the least accountable of the Republican epidemics 
was the " Buono Stato " of Rienzi. His code of laws, proclaimed 
from the Capitol, shows real administrative power, which belies 
the theory that he was a mere masquerader with an instinct for 
dramatic effect and a demagogue's gift of persuasion. The thing 
which is surprising is that the originator of the Buono Stato 
have shown so little stability and so great an inherent capability 
of deterioration. 

The democratic revolution was watched from Avignon at first 



218 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

with approval, afterwards with suspicion, and, finally, with 
active hostility. It was natural that the Pope should be well- 
disposed towards a movement avowedly hostile to the power of 
the Roman nobles. The Colonna and the Orsini, contemptuous 
at first of the noisy and rather vulgar proceedings, were forced 
to take them seriously when they found their houses besieged 
by the mob, their defences prohibited by law, and their persons 
proscribed by the Tribune ; their submission exercised an influ- 
ence beyond the walls of Rome. The country nobles followed 
their lead, and Lewis of Hungary and Joanna of Naples called 
on Rienzi to arbitrate in their quarrel. For a moment Europe 
was dazzled by the dream of Rome's ancient splendour, which 
Rienzi had compounded from his knowledge of classical litera- 
ture and his own fiery imagination. Then came rumours of 
strange patriotic orgies in the new-born Republic. Rienzi, 
the self-styled Tribune, was bathing ceremoniously in the por- 
phyry font of Constantine, and crowning himself with the Seven 
Crowns of the Holy Ghost. The reports of the Tribune which 
reached Avignon did not stop short at mere exhibitions of 
vanity. Sinister accounts of treachery were mingled with 
fantastic stories of brutal cowardice. Clearly the days of the 
Buono Stato were numbered. Clement's answer to the imperi- 
ous demand of the Tribune for his return was to send a legate 
with a writ of excommunication to denounce Rienzi as a heretic. 
As the declared enemy of the Papacy, Rienzi lost what semblance 
of authoritative sanction he had hitherto been able to parade. 
He had already forfeited the confidence of his immediate sup- 
porters. After seven months of glorification, therefore, the 
Buono Stato fell. Roman Republicanism sank back into the 
ruins whence it had emerged, and the Tribune sought congenial 
shelter among the revolutionary retreats of the Fraticelli. 

Meanwhile, Clement VI. was outstripping all his predecessors 
in zeal for the cause of France. The English war gave him a 
special opportunity to be useful to the French monarchy. First 
he tried to prevent it ; failing in this, he interceded with England 
after Cressy and Calais ; finally, he granted an ecclesiastical 
tenth to Philip VI. to help him pay his way, and encouraged 
his relations to give private financial assistance to the French 
barons. " Ipse Francus, Franco ferrenter adhaesit " is a mild 
indication of the direction of his policy. Moreover, he bought 
Avignon from Joanna of Naples, and thus committed the 
Papacy more irrevocably than ever to the domination of France. 

While Clement was packing his Curia with more French 
Cardinals, opposition was growing louder in Europe, and was 



WHEN ISEAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 219 

naturally headed by the English. The Pope's desire for money 
was boundless, and, in his absence from Italy, the revenues 
from the Papal States were negligible. England was conse- 
quently the chief " quarry.' 1 until Edward III. woke up to the 
fact that the French soldiers were being paid by the money 
which left England in the form of papal dues. These were never 
so burdensome or so excessive as now, when the national need 
of money was proportionately greater than ever. Clement VI. 
might well laugh, and say that his predecessors had not known 
how to be Popes. Funds poured in to Avignon from provisions, 
reservations, and dispensations. All ecclesiastical rights which 
it was possible to lay hands on were seized by the agents of the 
Curia. In 1343, two papal agents were opposed in seizing the 
offices to which Clement had appointed two of his Cardinals. 
Soon after, Edward formally complained to Clement of the 
" army of provisors which has invaded our realm ". The Statute 
of Provisors of 1351 gave legal form to the protest. Clement's 
need of money was greater than his discretion, and a clash of 
authority was the result. Royal nominees defended their claims 
in the King's court while their opponents flaunted papal Bulls. 
This led, in 1353, to the second great anti-papal Statute of 
Praemunire, which forbade an appeal to any foreign court on 
pain of outlawry. Of course, this was only the beginning, 
and not the end, of the contest, but it was a warning to the 
Avignon Popes of a new direction from which hostility might 
be anticipated. It was the beginning of direct financial op- 
position to the claims of the Papacy. 

"That great and prodigal lord," Pope Clement, was deluded 
by a false sense of security. The Emperor, Lewis, was hardly 
ever dangerous, and Charles IV. was docile to a fault. There 
was nothing to fear from France : the Queen of Naples knew 
that absolution for her crimes had been cheap at the price of 
Avignon. Italy, it is true, was not in a satisfactory state, but 
the loyalty of Rome could always be bought with a promise 
that the Papacy should return, and Rienzi's fall had shown 
that in emergency papal influence was still predominant So 
Clement heaped riches on his relations, and luxury on his court, 
and looked the other way when an occasional remonstrance 
reached him against the more flagrant vices of his clergy. The 
worst charges brought against the Avignon Papacy were pro- 
bably true of the pontificate of Clement VI. The clergy were 
luxurious and immoral, and at the papal court extravagance 
and good-living were carried much too far. But the Pope him- 
self was an able man, whose worst fault was the leniency which 



220 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

tolerated such an atmosphere. He was a very popular preacher, 
a successful diplomatist, and above all a kind-hearted man. 
He tried to protect the Jews against the brutal bigotry of 
Christendom, and even gave them a place of refuge in his Avig- 
non estate. Such acts of spontaneous generosity, sometimes 
impolitic in regard to his reputation, are characteristic of him. 
Perhaps he did not greatly care for contemporary good opinion. 
Certainly he was not a hypocrite : he lived on a lavish scale, 
and treated the world with immense good-humour. This was 
his way of showing Christendom how to be a Pope. 

Clement was succeeded by a man who was a complete con- 
trast to himself. Innocent VI. (1352-1362) instantly began to set 
his house in order. In the constitutions which he issued im- 
mediately after his consecration he revoked all the irregular 
powers which Clement had seized. Commendams were for- 
bidden, and every priest was bound over to personal residence 
in his cure on pain of excommunication. He laid down that 
preferment was to be the reward of merit alone since " ecclesi- 
astical dignities should follow virtue and not birth ". Conster- 
nation must have reigned among the satellites of the Avignon 
court as they watched the transformation from the reign of 
licence to the rule of austerity. 

Painstaking as he was, Innocent was not a successful poli- 
tician. His relations with Charles IV., which ought to have 
been an easy problem, were in effect a failure. He seems to 
have wanted money almost as urgently as Clement, and although 
he spent it in more worthy ways he met with quite as much 
opposition to his demands. His efforts to levy a tenth in Ger- 
many were opposed in vigorous language. In the words of the 
Count Palatine, " Stulta est mea sententia Germanorum devotio : 
quae Romanis vulturibus, qui sunt insatiabiles,cibum parat ". 
Charles IV. threw off the mask of meekness and asked the Pope 
why he did not first reform the morals of the clergy. In 1356, 
the Golden Bull of the Empire dealt a direct blow at the Papacy 
which had long been imminent. The declarations of Reuse and 
Frankfort had already proclaimed that the fourteenth century 
was not going to tolerate papal interference in imperial elections. 
But the Golden Bull was to be a fixed and fundamental law of 
the German constitution. It nominated the seven Electors who 
were from henceforth to choose the Emperor, and in defining 
their powers and privileges the Pope was not once mentioned, 
nor was there the faintest recognition of his claim, even in the 
form of a denial. 

Thwarted in his financial demands in England and in Ger- 



WHEN ISEAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 221 

many, Innocent began to reflect on the troubles of Italy and in 
particular on the state of the Patrimony. Avignon was no 
longer the peaceful retreat which it once had been. The French 
wars had let loose armies of mercenaries in the south of France, 
and to protect the papal court from bands of freebooters, Inno- 
cent had been obliged to build new and expensive fortifications. 
Moreover, the advantages of French protection were long ago ex- 
hausted, and Innocent began to look towards Rome with a 
growing confidence which struck new horror into the hearts of 
the French Cardinals. In 1351 Rienzi had reappeared as a 
factor in politics, his fertile imagination had caught fire again, 
not as before from studies of antiquity, but from the strange 
doctrines of the mystic-revolutionists among whom he had lived 
for three years. In common opposition to the Papacy the 
Fraticelli had found themselves associated with the Ghibelline 
philosophers in the camp of Lewis of Bavaria. Lewis was now 
dead and his place was filled by the least Ghibelline of Emper- 
ors, Charles IV. To him Rienzi went, armed with prophecies, 
appeals, and arguments, to persuade him to come to Italy, as 
his grandfather, Henry VII., had come, to reform the Church and 
restore amity to the world. Charles was certainly interested, 
and perhaps a little impressed, by the picturesque and turbulent 
apparition. But he had little in common with this wild dreamer 
of dreams, and it was dangerous to listen to his abuse of the 
Pope. Rienzi's courage and trust in Charles deserved a better 
fate than imprisonment, but the Bohemian Emperor was bound 
to the service of Avignon, and after a year of detention at Prague, 
Rienzi was handed over to the Pope. He was the type of man 
who is noblest in times of stress or of failure : his head was not 
strong enough to stand success. At Prague and at Avignon he 
behaved with the dignity of an idealist. He justified himself to 
the Pope by a curious succession of sophisms which he soon per- 
suaded himself to believe. But he faced the probability of death 
with courage, and convinced even his enemies of the inherent 
nobility of his nature. Petrarch, his friend throughout, de- 
fended him passionately both to the Cardinals and to the 
Romans. These two men were bound to each other by their 
common idealism and love of Rome. Petrarch's faith in Rienzi 
was strong enough to survive the tragedy of the fall of the 
Buono Stato : disillusioned as he was by the Tribune's conduct, 
he was ready to support him again in the second phase of his 
career. It is possible that Petrarch read his friend's character 
in the light of the mutual attraction of genius. He certainly 
contributed largely to the influence which saved his life. Rienzi 



222 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

in prison at Avignon, his appeals ringing in the ears of the 
Ghibellines, his praises sung by Petrarch in words of fire, was a 
more dangerous person than Rienzi playing the tyrant among 
the ruins of the Forum. 

Meanwhile the Romans were engaged in exalting a new 
demagogue, more violently anti -papal than ever Rienzi had been. 
Innocent conceived the masterly plan of playing off Rienzi 
against his inferior successor, Baroncelli. It had the double 
advantage of bringing the Romans back to papal allegiance and 
saving the Cardinals of Avignon from the necessity of condemn- 
ing to death a popular hero. The ingenious Rienzi easily 
became a Guelph, and in August, 1353, he set out for Italy with 
the best statesman of the papal court. 

In Cardinal Albornoz, Innocent had found the right man for 
the restoration of his power in Italy. He had gained military 
experience in fighting the Moors and he soon showed diplomatic 
wisdom in an exceptional degree. The expedition of Albornoz 
really amounted to a reconquest of papal Italy, for in the absence 
of the Popes every city of any consequence had either yielded 
to the local tyrant, or thrown off its allegiance in the name of 
communal liberty. Albornoz realised that the rights of the 
absent Papacy made no appeal in Italy, and that in order that 
it should win it must be allied to a principle more powerful than 
itself. He therefore made common cause with the spirit of 
liberty in the towns against local despotism. The most formid- 
able of his opponents was Bernabo Visconti, who had made good 
use of the papal absence to extend the boundaries of Milan and 
had lately added the city of Bologna to his plunder. Bernabo 
was no dutiful son of the Church to be cowed by a curse. When 
the legates were sent from Avignon to excommunicate him he 
made them eat the Bull as well as the leaden seal attached to it. 
But Albornoz was brilliantly successful, and in seven years he 
managed to win back almost the whole of the ground which had 
been lost. The recovery of Bologna in 1360 was a diplomatic 
achievement which rounded off the cycle of victory. 

Rienzi meanwhile had served his purpose in Rome. He had 
drawn off the supporters of Baroncelli and restored at least the 
nominal authority of the Popes. Once again his love of drama 
proved fatal to him. He played the Senator as crudely as he had 
played the Tribune, and the spell of his personality seems to 
have lost its hold on the Roman imagination. His execution of 
Italy's best condottiere, Fra Moreale, led to a mob rising, in the 
course of which he was assassinated. His death was probably a 
relief to Innocent, who would almost certainly have met with 



WHEN ISEAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 223 

further difficulties at the hands of the clever enfant terrible who 
had at last ended his masquerade. 

The work of Albornoz had made it possible for Innocent to 
contemplate a return to Rome, upon which it seems that he had 
always set his heart. Further ravages of the freebooters made it 
urgent. But by the time it was possible Innocent was too ill, and 
his death in 1362 seemed like a divine dispensation to the 
Cardinals, to whom Rome was a nightmare. 

To Urban V. (1362-1370) belongs the honour of ending the 
Babylonish captivity. In character he was saintly, wise, and 
only just short of heroic. At the beginning of his reign, Petrarch 
wrote to him, as he had written to two of his predecessors, urging 
him not to delay any longer. His appeal shows what experience 
had taught him of the Avignon curia. He describes the beauties 
of Italy, the excellencies of Italian wine, and the facilities of 
the journey from Avignon to Rome, Only in ending does he 
appeal to the Pope personally, with confidence in his moral 
vision — " Wouldst thou rather rise at the last day among the 
infamous sinners of Avignon than between Peter and Paul ? ". 

It was indeed no easy task which lay before Urban, and only 
a determined man could have carried it through. But there were 
strong political motives to urge him forward, as well as the 
appeals of his friend Petrarch. The peril of the mercenary bands 
was worse than ever ; the French wars had made France as dis- 
orderly as Italy; and the Black Death in 1361 had ravaged 
Avignon even more cruelly than elsewhere. The position of the 
Papacy was more than ever anomalous now that France was 
weak, and the conquests of Albornoz had at least made Italy 
possible. Leagues for the protection of the Pope were promised by 
the Italian cities, and the Emperor was eager to conduct him 
back in person. A fleet of sixty galleys sent by Naples, Venice, 
Genoa, and Pisa promised an easy journey. Only the opposition 
of the Cardinals stood in the way. The three Italians among 
them longed for Italy, but the soft Frenchmen dreaded the 
barbarism of Rome, and clung to their fashionable Avignon 
palaces. The seeds of the great schism were in . fact already 
planted in the College of Cardinals. The moral courage of 
Urban was strong enough to prevail, and in April, 1367, the fleet 
set sail "like a floating city". 

The first person to greet the Pope when he landed at Corneto 
was the conqueror Albornoz, now old and disillusioned by the 
ingratitude of the Curia, which had supplanted him as legate of 
the papal states, though he was still the directing influence in the 
Italian policy of the Pope. He had been recalled to Avignon in 



224 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

answer to charges brought against him in connection with 
Bologna, but Urban showed his sympathy with his brilliant ser- 
vant in a beautiful letter of consolation in which he ascribes his 
misfortunes to the envy which overtakes all great men. At 
Viterbo, the next stopping-place on the road to Rome, the death 
of Albornoz cast a shadow across the progress of the Pope. The 
splendour of his funeral did honour to the greatest of cardinal- 
statesmen. His work outlived him, and his code of laws for the 
patrimony, known as the JEgidianee, survived until the nineteenth 
century. Bologna holds a memorial to him in the College for 
young Spaniards which he founded there. He was buried as he 
desired at Assisi, whence his body was afterwards taken to his 
native land. The Pope gave the jubilee indulgence to the coffin- 
bearers, among them the King of Castile, who carried his remains 
by stages to Toledo. 

As the Pope drew near to Rome his progress looked more and 
more like the approach of a conqueror. His military escort 
increased, and a rebellion at Viterbo before he left that city, had 
necessitated special precautions. Rome did her best to honour 
his entry, but not all the garlands and banners could disguise the 
sinister appearance of the city. The churches were in ruins, the 
palaces were deserted, and stocks of rubbish filled the squares. 
For more than sixty stormy years there had been no court life, 
no pilgrims worth mentioning, no great religious festivals, none, 
in fact, of the ordinary sources of Roman prosperity. The nobles 
had shunned the dismal city, the mercenaries had sacked it, and 
even the priests had fled, leaving their deserted cloisters to add 
to the surrounding desolation. 

It needed all the determination of Urban to face the com- 
plaints of the Cardinals on the one hand, and the problems of 
government on the other. Much as he had hated the luxury of 
Avignon, the discomforts of the dilapidated Vatican must have 
told severely on a delicate constitution. Nevertheless he stayed 
in Rome for three years, and only left it when it seemed to him 
really expedient to go back to France in order to promote peace 
with England. His three years were crowded with the work of 
restoration. During the first winter Rome was filled with masons, 
and the clerics came flocking back. In the spring of 1368 
Charles IV. paid his promised visit to the Pope, but memorable 
as the occasion was on which " the two swords were reconciled " 
in the eyes of Christendom, the Emperor's sojourn was not an 
occasion of glory. Charles IV. was a sensible, commonplace man, 
and he spent most of his energies in Italy in commuting imperial 
claims for money. He went back to Germany rich with Italian 



WHEN ISKAEL CAME OUT OF EGYPT 225 

gold, but despised by the land which preferred fantasy to 
commonsense, and dreams to reality. 

In the following year another and apparently greater triumph 
fell to Urban when John Palseologus, the Eastern Emperor, knelt 
before him, and promised, in return for fighting-men and money, 
to heal the schism between East and West. Urban knew the 
circumstances too well to offer more than sympathy, but there 
were other reasons which made the idea of a crusade against the 
Turks a not unwelcome one at this moment. In order to under- 
stand the difficulties which Urban had to face, both in Avignon 
and in Italy, it is necessary to realise the immense power of the 
bands of mercenary soldiers which appeared in Europe in the 
fourteenth century. Their principal fields of activity were 
France and Italy — France distracted by the intermittent wars 
with England, and Italy torn asunder with the rival interests of 
tyrants and communes. These "errant military states," with 
their splendid generalship and organisation, were largely com- 
posed of " the proletariat of European society which was breaking 
out of its ancient grooves". The breakdown of chivalry as a 
social force had let loose, on the one hand, classes which had 
hitherto only known a modified freedom, and on the other hand 
it had deprived the nations of their standing armies. The result 
was that Europe was practically at the mercy of these strong 
and efficient confederacies, and the only hope of peace was to 
play off one against the other, and in all cases to pay and pay 
heavily. The answer of Landau to Albornoz when the latter 
asked him to respect the peace of the states of the Church is 
typical — " My Lord, our manner of life in Italy is universally 
known. To rob, plunder, murder those who resist, is our custom. 
Our revenues depend on mortgages in the provinces which we 
invade. Those who value their lives buy peace and quiet by 
heavy tribute." In 1364, Urban V. appealed to the Italian 
towns to combine in expelling the bands, and Albornoz managed 
to arrange a five years' truce with the White Company, which 
was, under John Hawkwood's leadership, the most formidable of 
all. But neither leagues nor truces had any real effect. The 
disunion of Italy played into the hands of the condottieri, whose 
interests lay in promoting jealousies and keeping up local 
vendetti. When, in 1365, Charles visited Urban at Avignon, the 
Emperor and the Pope formed the plan of using the mercenaries 
against the Turks. But the captains only jeered, knowing that 
there was more profit in the plunder of Italy than in the East, 
which had been pillaged by many generations of crusaders. 
Urban's bulls of excommunication against the bands are almost 
15 



226 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

pathetic in their inadequacy, and the League of Italy which he 
formed while he was making final preparations to leave Avignon 
fell to pieces at the first hint of internal jealousy. 

It was probably this which broke the spirit of Urban, and led 
him to leave Rome in 1370. Another reason was his failure to 
keep his hold on the cities which Albornoz had won back to 
allegiance, and in this he shows traces of lingering Franco- 
domination. Places had to be found for his French followers, 
and in employing them as local governors he deserted the 
traditions of Albornoz and loosened the bonds with municipal 
self-government in the towns. Urban's departure was the signal 
for a general rising against the French Papacy, and the con- 
sciousness of failure must have been growing on him for some 
time. St. Bridget's warning of death when he left Italy, and the 
sorrow of the Roman clergy, who genuinely loved him, could not 
avail to keep him when the troubles of France called him back. 
His farewell speech to the Romans, in which he thanks them 
for their good behaviour while he lived among them, shows how 
little a Pope might expect from the city which had most reason 
for gratitude. Two months after his return to Avignon Urban 
V. died in humility in his brother's house. It would be a harsh 
world which would echo the censure of Petrarch, unblinded by 
his prejudice and assisted by historical perspective: "Pope 
Urban would have been numbered among the most honoured 
men," says Petrarch, "if, when dying, his litter had been carried 
before- the altar of St. Peter, and if with tranquil conscience he 
had there fallen asleep in death, invoking God and the world as 
witnesses that if ever any Pope forsook this place the fault was 
not his, but that of the author of his disgraceful flight ". 



CHAPTER XXI 
THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS, a.d. 1370-1418 

IN spite of all his efforts. Urban V. had done little more than 
sow the wind. His learned and gentle successor, Gregory 
XL (1370-1373), had a harder task than ever before him, for 
the Cardinals knew from experience what to expect in Italy, and 
the Italian cities had learnt how to resist the French Papacy. 
The work of Albornoz had been undone, the city states of Italy had 
entered on their golden age, and the Papacy stood with its back 
to the dawn. Florence, in her proud freedom, deserted her Guelph 
traditions, and put herself at the head of a League of Liberty 
against the Pope and his foreign governors. Eighty cities 
followed the red banner of Florence, inscribed with a silver 
"Libertas"; Joanna of Naples joined the national movement, 
Bernabo Visconti made himself its leader, and the Pope's own 
"Holy Company" under Hawkwood was bought over for 13,000 
gold florins. Rome stood aloof in spite of blandishments, for 
the Romans had reason to know that Gregory would not betray 
their hopes for a permanent return of the Curia. In the first 
negotiations between Gregory and the League, Bologna held the 
scales. Gregory, anxious to keep this "jewel in the papal 
crown," was ready to make reasonable terms, but Florence held 
out, trusting to the magic of the word ll liberty " to work its way, 
even in the Pope's most favoured city. The Florentines knew 
their ground : Bologna joined the league in March, 1376. Never 
before had such a thunder-cloud of excommunication broken on 
a rebel people as that in which the mild Gregory condemned the 
Florentines to be the slaves of every Christian nation wherever 
they might be found. 

Above the clamour of war the voice of Catherine of Siena 
was heard with its burden of peace. St. Catherine was much 
more than a political figure, but as the Joan of Arc of papal 
history her memory was reverenced in an age which could not 
have done justice to her mystical genius. Her letters to Gregory 
and to the Florentines are fearless, impartial, and ardent, and in 
both cases her plea is for peace at any price, even the price of 

227 



228 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

liberty or of temporal power. She implores Gregory to return 
to " the garden watered with the blood of martyrs," and urges him 
not to be deterred by the condition of Italy. " Do not let your- 
self be kept by what has come to pass in Bologna, but come. I 
tell you that ravening wolves will lay their heads in your lap 
like gentle lambs, and beseech you to have pity on them, 
Father." The maid of Siena showed more than paper courage. 
In the same year she went as the envoy of Florence to visit 
Gregory at Avignon. Her interviews with the Pope astonished 
the whole court, including Gregory himself, who heard the 
suffering of Italy and the sins of the clergy laid to his charge, 
and his own faults, more particularly his nepotism, sorrowfully 
deplored by the intrepid nun. The maid of Orleans at the head 
of her forces was no braver than the Italian girl who faced the 
perils of Avignon and dared the anger of the papal court, to give 
peace to Italy and unity to the world. Catherine was fortunate 
in the character of the man whom she was taking to task. 
Gregory defended her, treated her with honour, and — urged, it is 
true, by other considerations as well — yielded to her persuasion 
and allowed her to accompany him back to Rome. 

The journey was deplorable enough. Rough weather, the 
black looks of the Cardinals, and the political confusion of Italy 
would have deterred a less resolute man. But in January, 1377, 
Gregory entered Rome with a small military escort, sheltered by 
a baldachino, with dancers and tumblers in front of him and as 
many loyal nobles as he could collect at his back. St. Catherine 
had desired him to enter alone, accompanied only by the 
crucifix and a small religious procession, but the fourteenth 
century was not in sympathy with her ideal of religious 
simplicity. The news which reached Gregory in Rome was not 
encouraging. A massacre at Cesena strengthened the rebels, 
and Florence still offered the most unreasonable terms. But an 
Italian league could never hold together for very long, and in 
the course of a few months there were signs of disruption. 
Bologna was one of the first to buy autonomy at the price of 
peace, but other states followed its example. A peace congress 
at Sarzana was proposed at last, in which Bernabo Visconti was 
to act as mediator between the Pope and Florence. But before 
it was definitely arranged Gregory XI. was taken ill, and with 
failure behind him and tragedy in sight, he died on March 27, 
1378. The Papacy had worn him out, for he died an old man at 
the age of forty-seven. 

The tragedy which Gregory had foreseen was that of the 
house divided against itself. Two parties had for a long time 



THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 229 

existed in the College of Cardinals, the French and the Italian. 
Hitherto the Italian party had been too small to count as an 
opposition in times of election, but since the Popes had begun 
to leave Avignon a split had shown itself in the French party. 
The last four Popes had been Limousins — natives, that is, of 
the part of France round about Avignon. There is a racial 
difference between northern and southern France, and this 
contributed to the jealousy which sprang up between the Limou- 
sine Cardinals and the so-called Gallicans. None of the three 
parties was strong enough to stand alone, and therefore a man 
of no party was elected, the Neapolitan Archbishop of Bari, who 
took the name of Urban VI. (1378-1389). It was an unfortunate 
choice from every point of view, for it pleased no one, and the 
new Pope, though he was pious and austere, had a temperament 
which was fatal to the peace of Italy. The Romans resented 
his Neapolitan origin, and a riot occurred which gave rise later 
to the theory that his election was the result of compulsion and 
so invalid. 

Urban soon showed his character, and hastened the catas- 
trophe which had for so long been imminent. He was a keen 
reformer and he instantly published an unmeasured condemna- 
tion of those priests who, like most of the Cardinals, held several 
bishoprics or abbeys and served none of them. He called the 
priests perjurors who came to do him homage, because they had 
left their parishes to do it. He told one Cardinal he was a 
blockhead, and required the others to cease their foolish chatter- 
ing. St. Catherine, who was not afraid of a little violent language, 
warned him that "justice without mercy will be injustice," and 
that " excess destroys rather than builds up ". " For the sake 
of your crucified Lord," she adds, M keep these hasty movements 
of yours a little in check ". By August the endurance of the 
Cardinals was exhausted. After applying for leave of absence 
"for reasons of health," and failing to obtain it, the French 
Cardinals withdrew to Anagni. What had finally driven them 
away was the threat of Urban that he was going to create a large 
number of new Italian Cardinals to counteract the worldly in- 
fluence of the French. In September, 1378, they announced to 
the world that the true Pope was Robert of Geneva, henceforth 
known as Clement VII. 

The words of St. Catherine were not calculated to pour oil on 
the waters on this occasion : " I have learned that those devils 
in human form have made an election," she writes to Urban. 
u They have not chosen a Vicar of Christ, but an anti-Christ : 
never will I cease to acknowledge you, my dear Father, as the 



230 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Representative of Christ upon earth. Now forward, Holy 
Father : go without fear into this battle, go with the armour of 
divine love to cover you, for that is your defence." It was the 
last advice which it was necessary to give to such a man. 
Alberic da Barbiano was already in the field for Urban, and by 
June, 1379, Clement VII. found that Italy was no longer a 
possible country for an anti-pope, and was obliged to escape to 
Avignon. Here he was on friendly ground. The King of 
France, Charles V., had stood at the back of the rebel Cardinals. 
He had naturally regretted the departure of the Popes from 
Avignon, and he had much to fear from Urban's zeal for reform. 
He was, therefore, ready to finance Clement in his resistance to 
Urban, to lend him the Breton band of mercenaries, and to give 
him and his Cardinals the protection of France. In return, 
Clement granted most of the states of the Church to Louis of 
Anjou, as a prospective reward for the expulsion of Urban. The 
schism was an accomplished fact, but the course of it depended 
on France. "I am Pope," Charles is reported to have said, 
when he heard of the election of Urban, and Europe endorsed 
his opinion. England accordingly declared for Urban, and so 
did the Emperor Charles IV., who had always hated the Avignon 
Papacy. Scotland and Spain followed the lead of France ; 
Joanna of Naples joined Clement owing to an independent 
quarrel with Urban, and her enemy, the King of Hungary, 
therefore joined the rest of Italy in allegiance to the Roman 
Pope. 

Urban showed no wisdom in organising his forces. He chose 
to centre all his attention on Naples, where his quarrel, first with 
Joanna and afterwards with Charles of Durazzo, gave him a 
pretext for an endeavour to acquire a Neapolitan lordship, for 
his worthless nephew, Butillo. Urban was apt to concentrate 
with dogged futility on some one political object without recog- 
nising failure until it grew into catastrophe. In Naples, his 
humiliations came thick and fast. His Cardinals intrigued 
against him, provoked by the discomforts of life in a whirlwind 
court, and by the disastrous selfishness of Urban's schemes. 
He was besieged in Nocera, and treated by his enemies with 
open contempt. He could only retaliate by excommunicating 
the besieging army with great ceremony at his window four 
times a day. When finally he escaped, he was a homeless 
wanderer in Italy, with a few supporters to whom he was 
stupidly ungrateful, and six captive Cardinals, whose sufferings 
aroused sympathy with their conspiracy and hostility against 
the vindictive Pope. 



THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 231 

Urban was not a welcome guest in the towns which he pro- 
posed to honour. Genoa was not very respectful, and Florence 
refused to receive him at all. Perugia could not keep him out, 
but the love adventures of Butillo caused a riot which hastened 
their departure. Rome was in the throes of municipal rebellion, 
but he was driven by sheer poverty and lack of support to take 
refuge there on his way back to Naples in 1389. Here he died, 
deserted and unregretted by the friends who had rallied round 
him in the first crises of his reign. The schism may have been 
inevitable from the time when the Popes first left Avignon, but 
Urban had driven a wedge into the rift by his exuberant un- 
wisdom. His pontificate is an example of the danger of electing 
a Pope untried in greatness: as a non-party Archbishop he 
had had very little influence, and when he was made Pope he 
meant to have his fling. Many other Popes were like him in 
this, but the real trouble was that his aims were unworthy, and 
he was too honest to disguise them. 

Urban had created twenty-nine Italian Cardinals to fill the 
places of those who had deserted to Clement. Of these fourteen 
were in Rome at the time of his death. They met in conclave 
and elected Boniface IX. (1389-1404) who was first and foremost 
a man of peace, of affable ways, and a thorough Italian. The 
chroniclers consider it remarkable that no charge of unchastity 
was ever brought against him. "Though he was not above 
thirty years old when he entered upon the Popedom, yet he 
lived so strictly at that florid age and in those wicked times 
that no act of lust or inordinate pleasure could be charged upon 
him ; for he seemed to have changed his youth into age " 
(Platina). 

Meanwhile Clement VII. was not as strong as the antagonist 
of Urban VI. should have been. The desertions from Urban's 
camp were chiefly personal, and the distribution of nations 
remained as it was in the beginning. Clement's chief asset was 
the allegiance of Spain, which had been procured by his ablest 
supporter, Peter de Lana. On the other hand, there had been 
signs since 1380 of a tendency to weaken the loyalty of France. 
The death of Charles V. in 1380 had removed his strongest 
supporter. The failure of the French in Naples was a severe 
blow, and the money difficulty in France was very acute. But 
more serious still was the attitude of the University of Paris — 
that strong body of educated opinion which formed the ideas of 
Europe. The University had taken the troubles of Christendom 
profoundly to heart, and it showed a disconcerting disposition 
to ignore the political issues inherent in the schism, and to 



232 A SHOBT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

concentrate on the moral necessity for peace. In 1381, Pierre 
DAilly, the spokesman of the University, had suggested three 
ways of ending the schism, by cession, by compromise, or by 
General Council. In the same year Langenetur, a German 
doctor of Paris, wrote a defence of the principle of a General 
Council, which henceforth became the ruling idea of University 
policy. France on the whole followed the University, and its 
support of the Avignon Papacy was henceforth intermittent and 
unreliable. The madness of Charles VI. made Clement's position 
still more unstable, and his attempts to bribe the Court party as 
against the University did not increase his popularity in Paris. 
The truth was that Clement was too sensitive for an anti-pope : 
he could neither get on with nor without France, and while he 
resented his dependence he could not make good his emancipa- 
tion. 

Boniface IX. was more successful than Clement, because his 
aims were definite, consistent, and limited. He wanted to 
restore the papal monarchy in Italy, and he wanted as much 
money as he could get. If " money was the origin of the 
schism " as contemporary chroniclers insist, it was also the 
chief difficulty of the schismatic popes, for the papal revenues 
which had been found insufficient for one Pope, now had to pro- 
vide for two, and that in the teeth of the storm which had 
already gathered against papal exactions. Boniface showed the 
genius of an auctioneer in the sale of offices, and the wisdom of an 
extortioner in commuting advantages into money. He sold not 
only the offices themselves, but " preferences " to the offices, and 
if there were bidders enough, " pre-preferences ". He sold the 
titles of papal Vicars to the nobles who had seized lordships in 
the Papal States, and renewed them for further payments after 
ten years. This was an ingenious plan, because, while it 
sanctioned the fact, which could not be disputed, it reserved a 
certain discretionary authority for the Pope to use in the future. 
Its disadvantages would not be felt until time had neutralised 
the Pope's influence, and until such great names as Malatesta of 
Rimini and Este of Ferrara had eclipsed the shadowy claim of 
ecclesiastical overlordship. 

Like his predecessor, Boniface IX. founded his Italian policy 
on Naples. He allied himself with Ladislas, the young son of 
Charles, and reaped the advantages of that prince's energy and 
success. But it was always dangerous for a Pope to commend 
the fortunes of the Papacy to youth and ambition, and the 
career of Ladislas is no exception to this rule. While Ladislas 
was making good his position in Naples, sanctioned and helped 



THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 233 

by the alliance of the Papacy, Boniface was struggling with the 
nobles of the Campagna, and collecting lands and titles for his 
relations. In 1393 he was driven from Rome through the un- 
popularity caused by his financial exactions, but Ladislas came 
to the rescue and enabled him to return on the most favourable 
terms. A second rising was put down by Ladislas a few years 
later, and in 1398 the mere rumour of his approach was enough 
to subdue the rebel Count of Fondi and the more formidable 
Count Vico of Viterbo, and to win from the Romans the sacrifice 
of their civic liberty. Ladislas was running up a long account 
against Boniface, which the future would have to pay. 

The movement in favour of unity threatened Boniface just 
as severely as his rival. In 1394, the University of Paris was 
pressing a scheme for the withdrawal of allegiance from both 
Popes, and Boniface felt it expedient to give his approval, 
knowing that Clement would oppose it, and hoping to win favour 
in France by his show of humility. But the death of Clement — 
the "opportunist who lived by compromises " — seemed to pro- 
vide an easier way. Union did, indeed, appear to be in sight. 
" It was as though the Holy Ghost stood at the door and 
knocked." But the French Cardinals, unwilling to do all the 
surrendering, elected Peter de Luna as Benedict XIII. on the 
express understanding that he should abdicate as soon as he 
was required to do so. Instead of carrying out his promise, he 
clung with amazing tenacity to his unenviable office, survived 
five rival Popes, and died after thirty years of futile self-assertion. 
The immediate situation created by his election was a deadlock. 
Neither Pope would move without the other, and both were 
content to carry on a war of excommunication. Benedict XIII. 
showed a surprising power of winning over the best of his 
opponents: he seems to have had a scholar's attraction for 
scholars, and even D'Ailly, the apostle of unity, accepted a 
bishopric from »him in 1395. But the unity movement had 
spread from Paris throughout Europe, and in 1397 embassies 
from England, France, and Castile were sent to Rome and 
Avignon to require the Popes to heal the schism before 1398. 
In 1398, Charles of France met Wenzel, King of Germany, at 
Rheims, and each undertook to make his own Pope resign. This 
was followed by the withdrawal of the allegiance of France from 
Benedict, and the siege of Avignon from September to April. 
Wenzel meanwhile insisted that Charles must act first — " When 
he has deposed his Pope, we will depose ours ". The truth was 
that both Kings had promised more than they could fulfil. 
France was being torn by civil war, and the successes of the 



234 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Orleanists had brought a reaction in favour of Benedict XIII., 
who was now released from Avignon, and successfully at work 
winning over the Burgundian faction. Boniface was playing 
much the same game in Germany. He was supporting Rupert 
against Wenzel, and in Hungary he championed the claims of 
Ladislas against Wenzel's brother, Sigismund. Envoys passed 
between the rival Popes, but to no purpose: neither of them 
really wanted unity, for each in his own way found the schism 
a success. 

When the envoys of Benedict reached Rome they found 
Boniface ill and in great pain, and in October, 1404, he died. 
His last reported words were : " If I had more money, I should 
be well enough ". The Roman Cardinals followed the example 
of Avignon in the next election, and each promised to resign if 
elected. As at Avignon the promise was broken by the new 
Pope, Innocent VII. (1404-1406), an old and blameless Neapolitan, 
who owed his election to the certainty that he would not live 
very long. In his two years' pontificate he reaped the un- 
fortunate results of his predecessor's dealings with Ladislas. 
Innocent was too old to hold his own against the strong forces 
of young Italy, and from the first the King of Naples made him 
his tool. Ladislas made an agreement with the Romans which 
left him the arbiter in all their quarrels with the Papacy. The 
next step was, of course, to stir them up to revolt, and so to 
weaken both sides that Rome should fall an easy prey to Naples. 
Innocent was at first popular in Rome, but the wiles of Ladislas 
and the importunities of his own relations soon turned the tide. 
When the Romans found that Ladislas was ready to support 
them, they turned on Innocent and wrung concessions from him 
till he had no more to yield. " I have given you all you wished," 
he said; "what more can I give you except this mantle?" In 
a dispute concerning the custody of the bridges, his nephew 
killed eleven citizens who were under the Pope's protection. 
The riot which followed obliged Innocent to escape to Viterbo, 
while the Colonna seized the Vatican, and Ladislas occupied the 
city. In January, 1406, the Romans implored him to return, 
and after a few months of peace, he died. Nothing had been 
done for the cause of unity but a few futile negotiations between 
Innocent and Benedict XIII. , the latter having fled to Genoa 
owing to a revulsion of feeling in France. 

Encouraged by the death of Innocent the Roman Cardinals 
elected another old Pope in November, 1406. Gregory XII. 
(1406-1417) was eighty years of age, and all his life he had been 
renowned for his sincerity. He was known to care for nothing 



THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 235 

but unity, and in his first sermon as Pope he gave out as his 
text: "Prepare ye the way of the Lord". He had, of course, 
undertaken to resign at once, and there is every reason to think 
that he meant to keep his word. But he was torn between 
Ladislas and his relations, and led by them into uncongenial 
duplicities. In his first negotiations with Benedict neither side 
was sincere, and a meeting was appointed at Savona which 
neither Pope meant to attend. Gregory's nephew, Antonio 
Correr, was his spokesman, and also it seems his master. In 
May, 1407, the envoys of France, Pierre DAilly among them, 
approached each Pope in turn ; the interviews were characteristic 
of the two men. Benedict answered the questions put to him so 
fast and so fluently that no one understood what he said, and 
every one relied on his neighbour's intelligence to exceed his own. 
When the general haziness was discovered, they asked in plain 
language for a Bull containing a promise to abdicate at Savona. 
Benedict put them off once more, this time with an emotional 
appeal for confidence and a gentle remonstrance for their want 
of faith which reduced the envoys to tears, and sent them back 
to Paris forgiven and deceived. 

Gregory was completely in the hands of his relations, who 
spent his money and alienated his supporters, while round him 
whirled intrigues of all kinds to prevent his resignation. The 
envoys could make nothing of him. He disavowed his nephew's 
undertaking that he should go to Savona; he did not see how 
he was to go ; he could not afford the galleys ; he did not like 
the treaty ; he could not leave Rome while Ladislas was so 
near. The inexorable D'Ailly answered his excuses point by 
point, and finally reduced him to tears. It seems as if at the 
back of his reluctance was the fear of his own family. " Oh, I 
will give you union, do not doubt it," he cried, pathetically dis- 
traught ; " and I will satisfy your King, but I pray you do not 
leave me, and let some of your number accompany me on my 
way and comfort me." 

The time for the meeting drew near, and Gregory was said to 
be on his way to Savona. A letter from Benedict reached him 
on his journey. "We are both old men," wrote Benedict, "God 
has given us a great opportunity ; let us accept it when offered 
before we die." But Gregory's journey proved to be merely a 
tour for the aggrandisement of his nephews, and bad news from 
Rome was a pretext for saving him from "the damnable and 
diabolical suggestion " of abdication. There was really some 
excuse for Gregory : Ladislas was financing rebellion in Rome, 
and Benedict XIII. was found to be intriguing behind his back. 



236 A SHOBT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

But the patience of Christendom was exhausted, and drastic 
measures were in preparation against both him and his rival. 
Eight Cardinals met together at Livorno, four from each Curia, 
to discuss plans for a General Council. All Gregory's Cardinals 
had deserted him except one, and the strongest man of his 
party, Baldassare Cossa, legate of Bologna, was raising troops 
against him. Benedict was equally defenceless, for France had 
threatened to withdraw obedience and had already cut off 
supplies. The Council of Pisa was announced by the Cardinals 
for May 29, 1409. Their action was of course a revolution, but 
it was sanctioned by necessity, and Europe readily acquiesced. 
Gregory and Benedict were both equally discredited, for both 
had shown a deplorable lack of public spirit. But neither was 
without his supporters, even at this crisis. Gregory was out of 
his element in politics, but he was a good man in private life, 
and it is impossible not to be sorry for him. " I followed the 
Pope from Lucca rather through affection than because I ap- 
prove his course," said Leo Bruni. Benedict's defects, on the 
other hand, lay in the quality of his mind, which was hard and 
legal, and he did not know how to present his case to those who 
were different from himself. 

The attitude of the Council of Pisa towards both Popes was 
summary and uncompromising. On their failure to appear in 
answer to summons, they were both pronounced contumacious, 
and after two months' delay a decree of deposition was issued 
against them. The Cardinals' call to arms had met a ready 
response from the national churches, and yet the assembly at 
Pisa, in spite of its numerical strength, was obviously not sure 
of itself. D'Ailly and Gerson laboured feverishly to establish a 
legal basis for the act of revolution : the law of nature, the usage 
of primitive Christianity, and the authority of Scripture were 
brought forward to justify the Cardinals' emergency measure, 
and the proceedings were carried out with a combination of 
haste and intellectual violence which almost suggests apology. 
The Council was not unanimous, and yet the opposition remained 
unheard. The envoys of Rupert, King of the Romans, were 
excluded, and Carlo Malatesta, who refused to break faith with 
Gregory, could not get a hearing. The embassy of Benedict XIII. 
was not even received. The assembly was almost entirely 
ecclesiastical ; it was obviously uncomfortable in rebellion, and 
the plea of emergency gave it no relief. The decree of deposi- 
tion did not end the schism, because each of the Popes retained 
some of his followers, who were unwilling to abide by the con- 
ciliar decision. In June, 1409, when there were still two Popes 



THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 237 

in Christendom, the Council of Pisa proceeded to elect a third. 
For this reason it is said to have failed; it did not end the 
schism, and it carried through no reform ; it did, however, effect 
a more momentous achievement in paving the way for the 
reformation. 

The Council's Pope, Alexander V. (1409-1410), lived only ten 
months ; unable to enter Rome, which was held by Ladislas in 
the name of Gregory, he died at Bologna, under the shadow of 
Baldassare Cossa. Alexander was a Greek theologian, whose 
heart was bound up with the Franciscans. The contest between 
the friars and the parochial clergy, of which Chaucer gives so 
clear a picture, was then at its height. The unworldly Alex- 
ander's one important measure was a Bull in favour of his beloved 
order of such extravagant beneficence that the Franciscans 
themselves had to refute it in self-defence. 

The inevitable successor of Alexander was the man who had 
really carried through the Council of Pisa. Baldassare Cossa, 
who took the name of John XXIII. (1410-1415). cannot fairly be 
judged by ordinary ecclesiastical standards. He was first and 
foremost an able condottiere, who as legate had made himself 
lord of Bologna, and ruled it with firmness and care. He had 
risen through his success as an extortioner for Boniface IX., and 
his extraordinary efficiency in profit-making showed itself as 
much in politics as in finance. The first problem which con- 
fronted him as Pope was the schism which had infected the 
Empire. Of the three candidates to the Empire, John chose to 
ally himself with the Sigismund of Bohemia, whose allegiance 
was to cost him dear. The immediate res alt, however, was to 
give him the support of Germany, and, encouraged by this, he 
set out for Rome to fight Ladislas in the name of Louis of Anjou. 
But after the one victory of Rocca Secca, the fortunes of John 
and his ally deserted them. Louis proved to be useless, and their 
best general, the famous Sforza. deserted to Ladislas. After con- 
soling himself with burning Sforza in effigy and indulging in a 
few coarse jokes at his expense, John made peace with Ladislas 
in terms which are characteristic of Italian warfare at this period. 
Both sides threw over their allies, and neither meant to keep 
faith with the other when they were disarmed. 

Meanwhile, John found himself obliged to take steps towards 
summoning a Council for the reform of ecclesiastical abuses, 
which had been enjoined by the Council of Pisa. If reform had 
been difficult to carry through when there were two Popes, it was 
harder still with three, and John had no intention of modifying 
or abolishing any profitable abuses which helped him to pay his 



238 A SHOBT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

way. Nor was his character unknown, for, in answer to his sum- 
mons for a Council in Rome in February, 1413, only a few clergy 
arrived, and their serious business merely consisted in burning 
the books of John Wyclif on the steps of St. Peter's. 

Soon after the Council, John had to take refuge in Florence, 
while Ladislas occupied Rome. While he was there he opened 
negotiations with Sigismund, who was anxious to carry his im- 
perial claims to Italy in the time-honoured imperial manner. 
As a preliminary he suggested another General Council, and he 
made this a condition of his alliance with John XXIII. The 
thought of Ladislas and his soldiers in Rome led John to agree, 
and his envoys set out to discuss the place and conditions for 
the assembly of the Council. Sigismund proposed the town of 
Constance, and, in the face of the Pope's expostulations, he re- 
mained surprisingly obdurate. John knew the importance of 
meeting the Council on his own territory, but in the end he was 
obliged to submit. All he could do was to safeguard his personal 
freedom, and to ally himself with Frederick of Austria, whose 
territory dominated the " trap for foxes," as John gloomily named 
the Council meeting-place. 

The Council of Constance had an ambitious programme. Its 
aim was " to restore the unity of the Church ; to reform it in 
head and members ; and to purge it of erroneous doctrine". It 
is unnecessary here to describe the immorality and worldliness 
of the clerical standard in the fifteenth century, for all con- 
temporary literature bears witness to it. It was natural that 
the doctrine which enabled such conditions to survive should 
be called in question as well as the conduct for which it was un- 
justly made responsible. The Council of Constance was a real 
congress of Europe, and not, like Pisa, a glorified synod of 
ecclesiastics. At Constance, therefore, there was less unanimity 
of purpose, and a greater complexity of motives. The University 
of Paris, which had been so active in introducing the conciliar 
movement, now wanted merely to restore and purify the Papacy, 
which schism had degraded. Some German reformers, of whom 
Dietrich of Niem is typical, wanted to go further and limit the 
papal power, while John Huss and his Bohemian supporters 
demanded a root-and-branch reform of the entire papal system. 
With regard to unity, John XXIII. protested with some reason 
that Pisa had settled the question already, but the wiser counsel 
of D'Ailly, that Benedict and Gregory should be gently treated, 
ultimately prevailed. 

With the arrival of Sigismund in December, 1414, the Council 
opened in the full splendour of the pageantry in which he de- 



WM 



THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 239 

lighted. Between 50,000 and 100,000 strangers came to the little 
Swiss town, and among them fifteen hundred prostitutes and four- 
teen hundred minstrels and mountebanks. Business opened with 
a crushing blow for John XXIII. A proposal was made that all 
the three Popes should abdicate at once. It was avowedly hard 
on John, but he would not refuse "since the Good Shepherd 
would lay down his life for the sheep ". That, however, was not 
John's conception of the pastoral office. His acquiescence was 
due to his confidence in the Italian majority to vote solidly in 
his favour. Bishop Hallam of Salisbury cut away the ground 
under his feet by proposing that each nation should vote 
separately, irrespective of its numerical strength. The proposal 
was fatal both to John and to the Council, as after events were 
to show. A Bull was wrung from the reluctant Pope, after two 
formulae had been rejected as insufficiently binding, and John 
made a last desperate and fruitless attempt to bribe Sigismund 
with the gift of the Golden Rose — the highest compliment which 
could pass between a Pope and his royal sons. When, however, 
Sigismund began to talk about a new election, John felt that 
it was time to act. With the help of his friend Frederick of 
Austria, he escaped from the foxes' trap, and took refuge under 
Frederick's protection at SchafThausen. Frederick meanwhile 
was entertaining the Council at a tourney, while John passed 
through the gates disguised as a groom. His excuse was that 
his life was in danger in Constance, both from ill-health and 
from his enemies. " By the grace of God we are free," he wrote 
to Sigismund, "and in agreeable atmosphere at Schaffhausen, 
where we came unknown to our son Frederick of Austria, and 
with no intention of going back upon our promise of abdicating 
to promote the peace of the Church, but that we may carry it 
out in freedom and with regard to our health ". 

His flight left the Cardinals in a dilemma. They must either 
obey the summons of the Pope and share his inevitable fall, or 
they must remain with the Council and bear the brunt of its 
displeasure. It had by now become their settled policy to 
defend the theoretical position of the Papacy and ward off all 
dangerous efforts towards reform. Even D'Ailly, since John had 
made him a Cardinal, saw the situation from the angle of the 
Curia; the Cardinals must stand or fall with the Papacy and 
the claims of the Council, soaring daily higher, must be some- 
how held in check. It was not loyalty to John, but to the 
principle of the Papacy, which threw the Cardinals into 
opposition, and they made no attempt to defend the Pope 
against the charges brought against his character in the decree 







240 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of deposition which denounced him as "unworthy, useless, and 
harmful". 

John himself did not attempt to answer the fifty-four charges 
of the Council, because he knew that they were unanswerable. 
He offered no defence, and tried only to avoid a public humilia- 
tion. His accusers ranged over his life and unearthed the sins 
of his youth and the crimes of his manhood. They applied to 
him a standard to which he would never have pretended to 
aspire, and condemned him for conduct characteristic of the 
life of the freebooters' camp, to which he properly belonged. 
Among other accusations we find, " Item quod Dominus Joannes 
Papa cum uxore patris sui et cum Sanctis monialibus incestum, 
cum virginibus stuprum, et cum conjugatis adulter ium et alia 
incontinential crimina . . . commisit". (Von de Hardt. See 
Creighton, vol. i., p. 341.) John's real mistake was in allowing 
himself to be made Pope. He had been a successful soldier of 
fortune, but he was ludicrously out of place among theologians 
and moral reformers. After his deposition on May 29, 1415, he 
was kept in custody till the dissolution of the Council, at the 
Castle of Heidelberg. In 1419, however, he escaped and found 
a shelter in the household of his friend, Cosimo de Medici. His 
last humiliation occurred when he prostrated himself before 
his successor, and won from him grace to retain the cardinalian 
purple. The Florentines had shown him respectful sympathy, 
and when he died, a few months later, they buried him in their 
beautiful Baptistery. In spite of Martin V.'s objection, Cosimo 
gave him a pontifical tomb, the work of Donatello and Michel- 
ozzo, inscribed with the words "quondam papa". 

With the deposition of John XXIIL, one of the aims of the 
Council was attained. The schism was practically over, for the 
rival Popes, Gregory and Benedict, were powerless in the face of 
the unanimity of the Council. The Cardinals were successful in 
postponing the question of constitutional reform by directing 
the zeal of the Council to an attack on heresy. The trial and 
execution of John Huss, the proto-martyr of Protestantism, is a 
stain on the spiritual integrity of the Council of Constance, but 
we are obliged to think of the Catholic Church in this period 
merely as a political system, and there can be little doubt that 
the sacrifice of Huss was a political necessity. John Huss had 
borrowed his creed very largely from Wyclif, whose teaching 
had been condemned five times in Bulls by Gregory XI., and on 
every occasion since, on which they had been brought into 
prominence. Wyclif was an idealist, and the Utopia which he 
constructed out of the papal criticism of his age had no point 



THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 241 

of contact with the world of fifteenth century conditions. In 
England, the religion of the heart, which Wyclif taught, was 
degraded by his followers into a spurious and unthinking 
socialism. Carried to Bohemia through the influence of 
Richard II. 's marriage, the system of Wyclif bcame identified 
with the national movement of the Czechs against the Germans, 
which had its centre at Prague. John Huss himself, like Wyclif, 
believed in the possibility of a kingdom of God on earth : no 
man, according to his teaching, who had committed a mortal 
sin could be a temporal ruler, a bishop, or a priest — " because 
his temporal or spiritual authority, his office, and his dignity 
would not be approved by God". Such a creed was in itself a 
challenge to the ecclesiastical system as it confronted Huss and 
his followers. Before accepting the invitation to the Council, 
Huss was warned that it might mean his death, but he knew 
that it was also his great opportunity, and trusting in the safe- 
conduct of Sigismund he set out for Constance. His fearlessness 
in examination and his uncompromising consistency made him 
an easy victim to the Council in its character of inquisition. 
By the logical extension of his principles to a criticism of 
temporal authority, he lost the support of Sigismund, and on 
July 6 he was burned, protesting to the last his loyalty to the 
Catholic faith. 

In one sense Huss was the scapegoat of the Cardinals, who 
had successfully diverted the streams of reform into the one 
channel in which they were safe. As the guardians of orthodoxy, 
the Cardinals restored their prestige in the Council which had 
suffered a check in the proceedings against John XXIII. They 
could now make assurance doubly sure by pressing for the 
election of a new Pope. Their plans were helped by the absence 
of Sigismund, who undertook a diplomatic expedition to Spain 
and France, from July, 1415, to January, 1417. In his absence 
the aristocratic Church party managed successfully to do 
nothing. Jerome of Prague followed John Huss to the stake, 
and the unorthodox works of Jean Petit were condemned 
through the influence of Gerson. It was easy to prolong 
theological discussion to the exclusion of practical reform, with 
the result that Sigismund found on his return, the Cardinals all- 
powerful, and his own position considerably weakened. More- 
over, the national antagonisms, which had been temporarily set 
aside, could no longer be controlled. Relations were strained to 
breaking point between the English and the French, and owing 
to this and the influence of D'Ailly, France was unanimous in 
supporting the demands of the Cardinals for the election of a 
16 



242 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

new Pope. Germany was divided against itself, and a hostile 
league of Rhenish electors had long been threatening Sigismund 
with trouble. In vain Sigismund pleaded that at Pisa the 
election of a new Pope had proved fatal to reform : the very- 
word had lost its power to kindle the enthusiasm of the wearied 
and impatient delegates. The desertion of England turned the 
scale against the reformation party. Henry V. and Cardinal 
Beaufort decided to throw in their lot with the papal party, and 
in January, 1418, an election was held by the Cardinals together 
with thirty delegates from the Council, six from each nation. 
Sigismund had to take what consolation was afforded by the 
decree Frequens, which provided for another Council to be held 
in five years, to be followed by others every ten years in the 
future. 

The election of Oddo Colonna as Martin V. (1417-1431) 
showed that the Cardinals were wise in their generation, for no 
one was better fitted to cope with the restoration of papal power. 
No one, either, was less likely to give trouble with projects 
of reform. His first announcement was that it was impious to 
appeal to a Council against a papal decision — a measure which 
he succeeded in carrying by a skilful manipulation of the 
national divisions, in spite of the opposition of Gerson and 
others, who realised that it was suicidal for the conciliar move- 
ment. To satisfy Sigismund's party, a few uncontestable reform 
measures were carried, and other disputed points were referred 
to Concordats issued separately to each nation. The dissolution 
of the Council in May, 1418, was clearly a relief to every one, for 
its zeal had languished and its usefulness was obviously extinct. 
Those who had set out in 1415 to redeem Israel must have 
longed to bury their shattered ideals in their native lands. The 
national Concordats proved to be worthless, except in the case of 
France, and the Hussite wars were soon to show that heresy had 
not been extinguished by the condemnation of a few honest 
men. For its achievement the Council could point to the unity 
of Christendom and the power of the true Pope Martin V. 

Meanwhile, of the two veterans of schism, Gregory XII. and 
Benedict XIII. , Benedict still held out, indomitable to the last. 
The desertion of Spain, the personal visit of Sigismund, and the 
anathema of the Council failed to shake the composure of the 
ninety-year-old anti-pope. A warrior to the last, he shut him- 
self up with his two Cardinals on the rock of Peniscola, where 
he kept his solitary state, wearing the papal tiara and secretly 
supported by Alfonso of Aragon. His rival had ended his days 
in peace and dignity as legate of Ancona, in 1417, but Peter de 



THE SCHISM AND THE COUNCILS 243 

Luna lived till 1423, still asserting his rights and insisting on 
the election of a successor to vindicate them after his death. 
Nothing in the career of Benedict XIII. compels our admira- 
tion so much as the sublime obstinacy of his thirty years' 
" contumacy ". 



PART IV 
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION 



CHAPTER XXII 
THE RECOVERY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV., a.d. 1418-1447 

MARTIN V. was Italian in aspiration and in sympathy, 
but he was wise enough not to plunge into Italian 
politics before he had had time to consider the situa- 
tion. He, therefore, spent three useful months at Geneva, re- 
ceiving embassies of congratulation, while he weighed in his 
mind the relative advantages of every possible line of Italian 
policy. As a Colonna, he would naturally have wanted to go 
straight to Rome, to live amongst his powerful relations and his 
family palaces. But this was the one course entirely out of the 
question, for Rome was the centre of a great duel between the 
two mightiest men in Italy, Braccio and Sforza. Round these 
brilliant generals the quarrels of the Italian states grouped them- 
selves, and their personal rivalry had become the determining 
factor in Italian politics. After some hesitation, Martin accepted 
the invitation of the Florentines to make his headquarters 
among them. His reception in Italy was magnificent, and the 
enthusiasm which greeted him was all the more gratifying be- 
cause it bore so little relation to his territorial strength. 

As a landless vagrant Pope, Martin V. looked out from Flor- 
ence on an Italy which was curiously changed from the Italy 
which his predecessors had known. The two great catastrophies 
which had overwhelmed the Papacy during the fourteenth cen- 
tury had the effect of withdrawing the Pope a little from the 
ordinary current of Italian life. Controversy and war had filled 
their feverish sojourns in Italy, and intercepted that close touch 
on atmospheric conditions which is characteristic of the most 
successful periods of papal policy. Apart from this, the fifteenth 
century, after the time of the Council of Constance, turns a new 
page in history. Already there were signs that the mind of 
Christendom had grown stale in controversy, and that a newer, 
fresher, intellectual life was waiting for it in the kingdom of Art 
and Learning. While the Papacy had languished in the sinister 
luxury of the fortress-palace of Avignon, Italy had passed 
through the " Heroic Age " of the Renaissance. When Martin 

247 



248 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

came to Florence in 1418, the spring-time of Art was filling the 
city with beauty. Giotto's " lily-tower" had been its pride for 
half a century : the Duomo and the Baptistery were being finished 
under the inspiration of Donatello, Ghiberti, and Brunelleschi. 
Fra Angelico was weaving his dreams out of the double thread 
drawn from the doctrinal controversies of the old century, and 
the spirit of beauty abroad in the new. The civic life of Florence, 
intense, vital, and full of movement, swept past the monastery 
of Santa Maria Novella, where Martin V. was staying, in the 
many-coloured stream which is familiar to us through the pic- 
tures of Masaccio. 

In history, as in art, new life comes into the picture : in 
politics, as in other spheres, the fifteenth century is the epoch 
of character. The people we meet are not merely picturesque — 
they are individual, with a psychology as subtle as that of the 
characters in modern politics. The chronicles, especially of 
Italy, become more vivid in response to the appeal of personality, 
and the decorative social life of the Quattrocento illuminates 
contemporary records with a new and graceful pageantry. 

Martin soon saw that his chief advantage lay in the fluctuating 
state of Italy. Everywhere there was movement. Venice was 
expanding her mainland territories in order to protect her trade 
routes. Filippo Maria Visconti was spreading his dominions— 
at the expense of the lesser lordships and mushroom republics 
which had succeeded in throwing off the yoke of his father. In 
the south, the misrule of Joanna of Naples was driving her king- 
dom to distraction : a nonentity herself, Joanna was ruled by a 
succession of incompetent favourites, who exasperated the 
nobles and crippled the power of the condottieri. The succes- 
sion question added to the unfortunate kingdom's embarrass- 
ments, for Joanna was a childless widow of forty-seven. For 
these very reasons, Martin chose to enter the arena through the 
door of Naples, conscious, perhaps, of his unusual gift for " fish- 
ing in troubled waters," and acquiring personal gain. Besides, 
Braccio held Rome, and Joanna had Sforza in her pay. Martin, 
therefore, allied himself with Joanna, and Sforza was glad 
enough to incorporate the cause of the Church with that of 
Naples in his operations against Braccio in Rome. But the 
instability of Joanna made her an unsatisfactory ally, and 
Sforza and Braccio were too evenly matched for alliance with 
either of them to be profitable at this moment. A readjustment 
suggested itself to Martin, which reveals him as an excellent 
politician. If he could detach both the military masters of 
Italy from their present pre-occupations — Sforza from Naples, 



RECOVERY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 249 

and Braccio from his ambitions in Rome — he could then employ 
them both in separate fields of enterprise, with the length of 
Italy between them, and a common cause to unite them. To 
circumvent the rivalry between these two was half-way towards 
the peace of Italy, and the whole way to the attainment of Rome. 
Early in 1420, Sforza visited Martin in Florence. It was far 
from easy to persuade him to make peace with Braccio, and, 
when this was done, it was a much less serious task to detach 
him from Joanna, and to commend to him the claims of Louis 
III. of Anjou to the succession in Naples. Hard on the heels of 
Sforza came Braccio, dressed with an eye to Florentine favour 
in purple and gold, and riding at the head of four hundred 
horsemen in gold and silver armour. He, too, made his bargain 
with Martin ; he was confirmed in Perugia and the other towns 
which he had stolen from the Pope, in return for the conquest 
of rebellious Bologna. But Braccio's visit cost Martin much 
more than a few towns in the March of Ancona, for through it 
he had learnt the humiliating truth that the Italian public was 
far more impressed by a brilliant soldier of fortune than by a 
penniless Pope. When he left Florence later in the year, the 
rhyme was still ringing in his ears which the Florentine boys 
had sung as they ran along the streets beside Braccio's shining 
escort : — 

Braccio valente 
Yince ogni gente 
II Papa Martino 
Non vale un quattrino. 

— (Creighton, II., p. 139.) 

"Poor Pope Martin isn't worth a farthing . . .," Martin re- 
peated in disgust to the Florentine Bruni, a few days before he 
left the city. 

His return to Rome was not likely to improve Martin's spirits, 
and the contrast between the desolation which he found there 
and the beauty and prosperity which he had left behind in 
Florence must have wounded his Roman patriotism. Platina, 
writing half- a- century later, thus describes Martin's home- 
coming : " When he came he found the city of Rome so dilapi- 
dated that it looked nothing like a city. You might have seen 
the houses ready to totter, the churches fallen down, the streets 
empty, the city full of dirt and mire, and in extreme want of all 
sorts of provisions. What should I say more? There was 
neither the face of a city nor any sign of civility there, the 
citizens seeming rather sojourners and vagabonds. The good 
Pope was troubled to see it, and applied himself to adorning 



250 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of the city and reforming the citizens' manners, so that in a 
short time it looked much better than before " (Platina, a Life of 
Martin V."). Martin, as a Roman noble, could not resist the 
impulse to concentrate on the great work of restoration, and it 
is in this that he earned the love of the Romans as " Temporum 
suorum felicitas " (Tomb of Martin V.). The course of events 
in politics encouraged him, for the breach in Naples between 
Joanna and the heir of her choice, Alfonso of Aragon, had led to 
a general peace in 1422. Louis of Anjou stayed in Rome, the 
guest and dependent of Martin, ready to be produced at any 
moment as a stick to beat Alfonso with in the inevitable renewal 
of hostilities. Alfonso carried on operations on his own account, 
and Braccio hurried from the conquest of Bologna to fight 
another round of his duel with Sforza. But in 1424 the two 
great rivals both fell in the Neapolitan war. Braccio was stabbed 
by an exiled Perugian who bore him a grudge, and Sforza was 
drowned in an attempt to save the life of a young follower who 
was fording the river Pescara. Their deaths gave Italy the first 
real chance of peace since Martin's accession, and the immediate 
result was the reconciliation between Martin and Alfonso of 
Aragon, through the influence of a Spanish envoy who thus 
introduces to papal history the notorious name of Borgia. 

Martin V. was the first Pope since the age of Boniface VIII. 
and Clement V. to use nepotism and family connections as a 
serious factor in his policy. In his recovery of the papal States 
he found this an immense advantage. As a Colonna he could 
rely on the support of one of the two great Roman families, 
and with the prestige of the Papacy behind him it was com- 
paratively easy to buy off the Orsini with fiefs and marriage 
alliances. The failure of the reform movement was stamped on 
the face of Italy by the family policy of Martin V., and yet it is 
impossible wholly to condemn him for taking the only obvious 
way out of his difficulties. The States of the Church had been 
too long alienated to be recovered by the exercise of papal 
claims and spiritual denunciations. It was better, in Martin's 
eyes, to retrieve them for the Pope's family than to let them 
pass right out of his control. From Joanna he got two large 
fiefs for his brothers, who became Prince of Salerno and Count 
of Alba respectively. By marriage alliances he won over the 
Orsini, the Gaetani, and Guido of Montefeltro. A Colonna 
marriage was no mesalliance for the greatest of Italian princes 
and a Colonna nepotate could not be regarded as an upstart, 
however ambitious his pretensions. It is true that the Papacy 
could not use marriages to the same effect as they could be used 



EECOVEEY: MAETIN Y. AND EUGENIUS IV. 251 

by an hereditary monarchy, for the advantages gained were 
personal, and limited to the lifetime of the Pope. But, as in 
the case of Martin, nepotism often meant immediate political 
success, especially in an age when good generals could always 
be bought by a powerful family, and a wise Pope would be 
careful to leave a family representative among the Cardinals, 
who would have a good chance of reaping the rewards of the 
future. 

Martin's most serious danger was the remnant of the reform 
party, which held him to the promise given at Constance that a 
Council should be called to deal more thoroughly with this in- 
convenient question. In 1423, Martin was obliged to summon 
a Council to Pavia, which was subsequently removed to Siena. 
The Pope's attitude was so obviously hostile that the delegates 
were discouraged ; many of them were bought over, and the 
others felt themselves insulted. The curial party carefully 
sowed dissensions among the nations, and no one was sorry 
when after a few months the legates published a Bull of dis- 
solution. The Council of Siena was too complete a failure to be 
politic, and Martin, with his usual skill in getting the best out 
of an awkward situation, followed it up with a reforming edict of 
his own, which he published in the following year. Martin's 
reforms were entirely directed against the Cardinals, who had 
reaped to the full the advantages of their victory at Constance. 
Martin now earned their undying displeasure by his provisions 
for their decorous living and his strict limitation of their house- 
holds. He thereby disarmed the cities, who looked on him as 
the opponent of reform, and at the same time made himself 
more than ever master of his own house. The cry of reform was 
not raised again until the end of his reign, when the storm 
brewing in Bohemia impelled Martin to summon another 
Council just before he died. 

In foreign policy, Martin was less successful than in Italy, 
but he did not lose ground. The concordats issued from Con- 
stance left a legacy of trouble by the recognition and encourage- 
ment which they gave to the national Churches. France in 
particular had advanced extravagant claims of independence. 
But the accession of Charles VII. in 1425, and his eagerness for 
the Pope's support, created a reaction in Martin's favour. 
Annates and appeals were restored in spite of the protests of the 
Parlement. In England he was less successful, but the weak- 
ness of Archbishop Chichele disguised his defeat. The anti- 
papal laws of England had rankled in the minds of many Popes. 
" Among Christians no States have made ordinances contrary to 



252 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

the liberty of the Church save England and Venice,'' Martin 
wrote to England, demanding a repeal of the statues of Pro- 
visors and Praemunire. But England was too full of Lollards, 
and Parliament was too proud of the anti-papal laws for the 
Archbishop even to get a hearing. All that Martin could do 
was to withdraw from an untenable position and to vent his 
anger on Chicheie by suspending his legatine authority. Car- 
dinal Beaufort also proved a broken reed, for he collected troops 
for a Hussite Crusade at the request of the Pope, and proceeded 
to march them off to the wars in France. Martin had got 
nothing out of England, but he had successfully asserted his 
right to interfere. 

Meanwhile he had been devoting himself with enthusiasm to 
the restoration of Rome. A terrible flood in 1422 had thrown 
the work back, and increased the poverty which was already 
calamitous. But since then, Martin himself, and his Cardinals, 
exhorted by him, had undertaken lavish plans for the preserva- 
tion and adornment of the Churches. Five hundred thousand 
gold florins were spent on the roof of St. Peter's. To St. John 
Lateran Martin gave its beautiful mosaic floor, and Gentile da 
Fabriano was employed to adorn its walls. The age of the great 
art patrons had hardly yet arrived, but Martin was generous to 
artists, and showed a genuine love of beauty in details of adorn- 
ment. His presents were always exquisite, and their intrinsic 
beauty must have excited as great a pleasure as the honour which 
they conferred. To men of rank he gave caps and swords of 
honour, to great ladies golden roses: the rings which he be- 
stowed on the Cardinals of his creation were finely wrought, 
and to the captains who fought the battles of the Holy See 
he presented wonderful banners and images of saints. The 
beautiful tiara and the clasp of his Florentine cope were as per- 
fect as Ghiberti's art could make them. But Martin's own 
pleasure in these things was limited : he used the talents of his 
artists as he used the skill of his generals, to bring back the 
lustre of the papal crown. His attitude to the early humanist 
movement was very much the same. He showed little personal 
interest in the revival of learning : he was suspicious of it, and 
not without reason disapproved of some of its votaries. When 
the body of St. Monica was brought to Rome in the course of his 
pontificate, he preached on her virtues, as the mother of St. 
Augustine, in words which must have distressed the humanists 
in his audience. " While we possess Augustine," he says, " what 
care we for the sagacity of Aristotle, the eloquence of Plato, the 
prudence of Varro, the dignified gravity of Socrates, the authority 



EECOVEEY: MAETIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 253 

of Pythagoras, or the skill of Empedocles ? We do not need these 
men; Augustine is enough for us." And yet among Martin's 
Cardinals were Capranica and Cesarini, who were humanists at 
heart, Prospero Colonna, his nephew, who was famous for his 
library, and Giordano Orsini, whose unique collection of manu- 
scripts was left to the Papacy in the time of Martin's successor. 
Among the secretaries we find Poggio, the brilliant Latinist, and 
Valla, his future antagonist, both more interested in turning the 
latest scandals of the Curia into scurrilous Latin than in retailing 
the edifying discourses of the Pope. 

In February, 1431, Martin V. died, in the same month in 
which he had summoned the Council of Basle. He had aimed 
at an achievement well within his reach, and for this reason he 
was extraordinarily successful. His common sense and shrewd- 
ness taught him to reap every possible advantage from the em- 
barrassments of his neighbours, and he never tried to run against 
the wind. He accepted things as they came, without enthusiasm 
and without opposition ; the Renaissance, the Councils, and the 
rivalries of condottieri all brought grist to the papal mill. While 
we praise his quiet energy, it is unreasonable to deplore that it 
stopped short of the moral reformation. To effect this he must 
have brought into play qualities the very opposite to those which 
made him a great temporal Pope. 

The Cardinals in conclave in 1431 were determined not to 
suffer again the indignities thrust upon them by Martin V. 
They therefore drew up a code for the future Pope to safeguard 
their dignities before they proceeded to an election. They then 
proceeded to elect a middle-class Venetian, who had the reputa- 
tion among them of a harmless nonentity. Gabriel Condulmier 
was a good figure-head, of a usefully pious disposition : here his 
advantages stopped. As Eugenius IV. (1431-1447) he soon 
showed himself to be a tactless and obstinate person, who, like 
the unfortunate Urban VI., acted on impulses and never aban- 
doned a foolish plan. He began his reign by a quarrel with the 
relations of Martin V. In his attempt to crush them he merely 
created a hostile party in the Curia and destroyed the peace of 
Rome. Cardinal Prospero Colonna, and the Colonna prote'ge", 
Cardinal Capranica, carried their quarrel over the Alps, and at 
the Council of Basle, which was now assembling, they incited 
that feeling of personal hostility to Eugenius which is traceable 
in all its doings. 

The difficulties of Eugenius were not all of his own making, 
although he showed an astonishing incompetence in dealing 
with them. But even Martin V. had feared the Council, which 



' ..- ■"=■■ , ... i . L ' l.Jl.MtL^L.1 ' .^ 



254 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

nothing but necessity would have led him to summon. The 
followers of John Huss in Bohemia had organised themselves, 
since the Council of Constance, into an army of militant Protes- 
tantism. Sigismund had led three unsuccessful military expedi- 
tions against the Hussites, and early in 1431, a Crusade, headed 
by Cardinal Cesarini, suffered a defeat which had shaken the 
Catholic world. It was clear that orthodoxy could not win with 
the sword, and it remained for the Council to find another 
solution. Under the influence of Cesarini — a man utterly to be 
respected, in whom his contemporaries recognised qualities far 
above the standard of his times — the Hussites were invited to a 
Conference with the Council, in which the articles of their faith 
were to be discussed by " men in whom you trust that the spirit 
of the Lord rests, gentle, God-fearing, humble, desirous of peace, 
seeking not their own but the things of Christ" (Letter to 
Bohemians). 

To the consternation of Cesarini, Eugenius, at this point, 
showed his opposition to the Council by sending a Bull of dis- 
solution to Basle. The Pope had taken alarm at the democratic 
character of the Council, and his rigid monastic training made 
him unprepared to consent to negotiate with heretics. In vain 
Cesarini entreated him to withdraw his Bull ; Eugenius showed 
an utter incapacity to grasp the situation. He thought he could 
count on the support of Sigismund, for Sigismund wanted to be 
crowned, and Eugenius could postpone the imperial coronation 
at his pleasure. In order to remain loyal to the Pope, Cesarini 
was obliged to resign the presidency of the Council, and the 
result was that the anti-papal party opened an attack on 
Eugenius, and declared him " contumacious ". In September, 
1432, Cesarini took up the presidency again, hoping to control 
the animosity of the Council, and reconcile it with the Pope be- 
fore it was too late. Sigismund held the key to the situation, 
and the Council therefore adopted him under its protection, 
which led the Pope to reopen negotiations. But Eugenius took 
a superior tone, and only consented to recognise the Council on 
terms which would cripple its power of action. Probably he 
knew that the crown could be dangled a little longer in front of 
Sigismund's eyes, and he was right. Sigismund, who had got as 
far as Siena, was determined to reach Rome at all costs. He 
therefore cooled in his attitude to the Council, urged it to 
moderation, and, in alliance with Eugenius, achieved his heart's 
desire. But the combination could not last. Neither Eugenius 
nor Sigismund had any resources to speak of, and both were 
deep in embarrassments. Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of 



KECOVEEY: MAKTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 255 

Milan, was posing as the champion of the Council in order to 
oppose Sigismund, whose imperial claims to Milan might become 
inconvenient. Filippo sent the two rising young condottieri 
against the Pope and the Emperor in the name of the Council. 
To Rome he sent Fortebraccio, the nephew of Martin's scourge, 
and to the March of Ancona he sent Sforza the younger. 
Fortebraccio found supporters among the Colonnesi, and soon 
the news of the Pope's ignominious flight to Florence delighted 
the ears of the fathers at Basle. Eugenius had to accept the 
inevitable. From Florence he surrendered to the Council of 
Basle, where Sigismund had arrived just in time to prevent the 
Pope's deposition. He had to confirm Sforza's conquests in the 
March, thus turning the hired adversary of a moment into the 
territorial foe of the future. 

The Council had been occupied meanwhile in the Hussite 
negotiations, untroubled by the attitude of the Pope. The 
dignity and the reality of the speeches on both sides show that 
the time had arrived when controversy could be carried on with- 
out recrimination, and when men could discuss their differences 
without hostility. Of course, Cesarini's task in keeping the 
peace was not a light one, and the congress occasionally fell to 
wrangling. But the general level was admirable, and the war 
of orators seldom spoiled it. The discussion turned on the 
Four Articles of Prag, which embodied the contentions of the 
Hussites, but it soon became clear that the Bohemians were 
divided among themselves. They were at one in demanding 
the Communion in both kinds, but, in the subtler articles of 
their faith, the Taborites, or extremists, far outpaced the 
moderate party, which was essentially Catholic. This was 
clearer still at the succeeding Diet of Prag, where the envoys of 
the Council produced proposals for reunion. The Four Articles 
were accepted in substance by the Council, but the modifications 
offended the Taborites, who offered battle and were cut to 
pieces under their brilliant general, Procop, at the battle of 
Lipan (August, 1434). 

An inundation of challenges from Basle followed the humili- 
ation of the Pope. In 1435, a decree was passed abolishing 
annates and dues, and the next year saw the audacious claim 
of the Council to issue indulgences on its own authority. 
Success, however, brought reaction, and the Council soon found 
that it had overshot the mark. The confiscation of the papal 
revenue threatened not only Eugenius but the very exist- 
ence of the Curia, and the "saner minority" of the Council 
were unprepared for such an extreme course of destruction. A 



256 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

new question came to the front with the beginning of overtures 
from the Greeks for reunion with Latin Christendom. The 
desire of the Greeks was not disinterested, and had little 
theological foundation. The Greek Emperor, John Palseologos, 
wanted a Crusade against the Turks, who were threatening the 
very gates of his capital. When the Council tried to carry on 
the negotiations, they found that the Pope had forestalled them. 
In answer to the envoy who carried the reform decree of the 
Council to Constantinople, the Greeks rejected it with scorn. 
"Either amend your edict or get you gone," was the reply. It 
was clear that union with the Greeks was to be effected through 
the Pope or not at all : it served as further cause of dissension 
between the Pope and the Council, and finally dropped out of 
the Council's programme. 

From this point the fortunes of Eugenius began to r^^ive. 
The Congress of Arras which had given peace to France in 1435, 
was ascribed to Eugenius, whose legates had arranged it. Mean- 
while the French radical party was all-powerful in the Council, 
and the other nations turned more and more to the Pope, fearing 
that the Council was heading for another Avignon " captivity ". 
Cesarini and Nicholas of Cusa were now the declared partisans 
of Eugenius and had given up the hopeless attempt to keep the 
peace. The rock on which the Pope and the Council actually 
split was the comparatively unimportant point of the town in 
which the conference with the Greeks should take place. The 
Council wanted Avignon — the Pope insisted on Udine or Florence. 
In the Cathedral at Basle the conflicting decrees were published 
simultaneously, the envoys shouting each other down amid the 
uproar of the contending factions. Then followed the usual 
proceedings : Eugenius was summoned and pronounced contu- 
macious ; the next step would be his deposition. Eugenius on 
his side dissolved the Council, and recalled the delegates to the 
council which he proposed to hold at Ferrara. 

Events in Italy had given encouragement to the Council in its 
extreme measures. On the death of Joanna, Eugenius claimed 
Naples as a lapsed fief and sent Vitelleschi to govern it. The re- 
sult was that Alfonso of Naples joined Visconti, and took up the 
cause of the Council against Eugenius, who on his part resumed 
the Angevin cause in Naples. This led directly to the climax 
of the unworthy struggle, when, in 1439, Eugenius was deposed, 
and the Duke of Savoy was elected by the Council as Felix V. 
The catastrophe of schism had once more befallen the Papacy, 
but the attitude of Europe was surprisingly calm. Germany 
remained sturdily neutral : a few princes declared for Felix V., 



EECOVEEY: MAETIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 257 

and to win over the rest became the whole object of conciliar 
policy. Sigismund had died in 1437, worn out by the legacy of 
trouble which the Council had left for him in Bohemia. Albert 
II., his short-lived successor, and the Electors had declared for 
neutrality, but both sides hoped much from Frederick III., 
whose indolence was as yet mistaken for prudence. The triumph 
of the extremists in the Council had brought it to ruin. All the 
best men were leaving Basle. It was obliged to retract its 
reforms in order to provide for the anti-pope, and thus put an 
end to its moral pretensions. Felix himself was dissatisfied 
with it, and in 1443 he deserted it for the more profitable 
alliance of the Electors. The Council henceforth simmered out 
in ignominious neglect. 

Eugenius could not take any credit to himself for his victory 
over the Council of Basle. Its disruption had come from within, 
and his good fortune lay solely in the characters of his sup- 
porters — men like Cesarini and Nicolas of Cusa, who had the 
courage of their convictions, and the power of imposing them 
on others. In Italy, the prestige which he won at the Council 
of Florence was out of all proportion to the advantages gained 
or his share in gaining them. The controversy with the Greeks 
was curious and picturesque rather than profitable, as far as its 
main object was concerned. The long-winded discussions of 
the theologians seemed to lead nowhere : the points which were 
all-important to the Greeks were hardly understood by the 
Latins, and the Emperor showed himself to be far more inter- 
ested in hunting the Este forests than in discussing the Filioque 
clause of the creed. When the plague broke out in Ferrara, 
the Council was removed to Florence, to the relief of the 
Marquis of Ferrara, who had carefully preserved his game, and 
of the Pope, who preferred the Greeks to be cut off from com- 
munications by sea. John Palaeologos was disappointed with 
the whole proceeding : he had counted on finding more disunion, 
and consequently more profit as a partisan, in Latin Christen- 
dom ; he had hoped for more politics and less theology, and 
above all for more money. The aged Patriarch, who had been 
brought against his will, was dying ; every one was tired of the 
endless discussions, and there was no desire for union as an end 
in itself. Accordingly, by a tacit agreement, vague words of 
definition were accepted on both sides, union was forced through 
just before the Patriarch died, and the Pope promised 300 men 
and two galleys for permanent use against the Turks. From a 
theological point of view the Union was worthless, and it was 
rejected by the Greeks at once ; but Europe did not look beyond 
17 



258 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

the published decree, and Eugenius owed more to it for his 
recovery of prestige than to anything else in his reign. 

The tide had turned for Eugenius, and in the last period of 
his pontificate, if it was not brilliant, he at least recovered much 
of the ground which he had lost. In 1440 the way was cleared 
for his return to Rome by the death of the condottiere-Cardinal 
Vitelleschi. In the early part of the reign of Eugenius, Vitelleschi 
had won the road to fame by subduing the Romagna, which 
bristled with small tyrants and rebel captains. The soldier- 
priest understood his work, and did it thoroughly. He left 
behind him a trail of crime and cruelty, and when in 1436 he 
had suppressed Rome, he ruled it with the iron hand of tyranny. 
He exterminated the last of the Prefects of Vico. He held 
Romagna against the Colonna and Orsini factions — against 
Sforza and Braccio, the champions of Milan — against the 
wily little Piccinino, who was also employed against Eugenius 
by Filippo Maria. He cleared the Campagna of freebooters, and 
destroyed thirty towers which had sheltered brigands. There 
was something in the quality of his daring which cast a glamour 
over Eugenius. He was loaded with honours ; he became a 
Cardinal, Archbishop of Florence, and Patriarch of Alexandria. 
Then suddenly he fell, through mysterious circumstances in 
which it is impossible to discover how far Eugenius was impli- 
cated. The Florentines apparently suspected Vitelleschi of con- 
spiring against them with Piccinino, and they seem to have 
undermined the Pope's confidence in him by accusing him of a 
desire to make himself independent in Romagna. As Vitelleschi 
was standing on the bridge of St. Angelo, the portcullis was 
suddenly lowered between him and his soldiers who had just 
passed out. A fortnight later he died. " A man who has 
achieved what I have done," he said, when he found himself a 
prisoner, " ought not to be arrested, but if he is, he ought not to 
be released. I shall die not of my wounds but of poison." His 
successor in the Pope's favour, Cardinal Scarampo, took care 
that his prediction should be fulfilled. The career of Vitelleschi, 
the crimes which he committed in the name of the Church, and 
his fall as an " over-mighty subject," are typical of the " restored " 
Papacy of the fifteenth century. 

In 1443 Eugenius changed his alliance with Venice and 
Florence for an alliance with Alfonso of Naples. He considered 
that the two cities had treated him unfairly in allowing Sforza 
to keep his conquests in the March of Ancona, by the terms of 
the Peace of Cremona, 1441. The Angevin party in Naples was 
extinct, and Alfonso was the only power which could support 



KECOVEEY: MAETIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 259 

Eugenius in Rome and at the same time fight for him against 
Sforza. Sforza was now the Duke of Milan's son-in-law. but 
they were not on the best of terms with each other, and after a 
few operations in the March, the sphere of war passed to the north. 
Sforza found the March too small for his ambitions, and allowed 
it to revert to Eugenius, who once more found himself master 
of a situation which he had done nothing to bring about. 

Meanwhile, the theological reaction against the Council was in 
full swing. Eugenius could issue excommunications with greater 
effect from a council in the Lateran than he could from Florence. 
But the greatest victory of all came to him on his death-bed, 
through the efforts of the humanist adventurer, iEneas Sylvius 
Piccolomini. Eugenius could not have found a finer instrument 
for his delicate negotiations with Germany than this valued 
Italian secretary of the Emperor. Events in Hungary, hitherto 
a bone of contention, opened the way for alliance with Frederick. 
The Pope and the Emperor had hitherto supported rival claim- 
ants to this unfortunate kingdom. But on the field of Varna, 
Vladislor of Hungary died fighting against the Turks. Vladislor 
was the de facto king whom Eugenius had upheld. With him 
died Cardinal Cesarini with characteristic heroism as the leader 
of a forlorn hope. Ladislas Posthumous, the ward of Frederick 
III., was now the sole heir of Hungary, and Eugenius was ready 
to support him. Frederick, on his side, sold his neutrality for a 
sum of money and a life interest in certain bishoprics and 
benefices in Germany. A harder task was the winning of the 
princes, many of whom were pledged to the support of Felix V. 
But the "noble deed" of iEneas found a way. An embassy 
from the princes offering haughty terms was supplemented by a 
secret embassy from iEneas, coaching the Pope in the part 
which he was to play. Eugenius sent a vague and conciliatory 
answer instead of the blank refusal which might have been 
expected. iEneas proceeded, meanwhile, to "squeeze the 
venom" out of the princes' proposals, making vast promises to 
them for which he had no authority, and carrying a carefully 
edited version of them to Rome. 

Eugenius was dying, but he wanted to see the end. He 
empowered the Cardinals to act for him, and consoled himself 
for his concessions by a secret protest in writing, which said that 
what he had done was merely to " allure " the Germans to unity, 
and was not to be considered as binding by his successor. In 
January, 1447, the restoration of German obedience was pub- 
lished, and Eugenius, obstinate to the last, lingered on in life, 
petulantly refusing extreme unction in his resolution to live. 



260 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

"What wonder," exclaimed Alfonso of Naples, "that the Pope 
who has warred against Sforza, the Colonna, and myself, and 
all Italy, dares-to fight against death also?" Time, usually the 
best friend of Eugenius, vanquished him at last, at the moment 
when his triumph seemed complete. His difficulties had been 
immense, and he had to cope with them in two spheres at once. 
His fortunes in Italy had reflected themselves at Basle, and 
each phase of the ecclesiastical quarrel reacted on his territorial 
policy. He was only the passive agent of his success, which he 
owed rather to the impetuosity of his enemies, and the inherent 
stability of the Papacy, than to any exertions on his own part. 
In character he is overshadowed by the men who surround him. 
He represents mediocrity among the talents — the commonplace 
in an age of distinction. He shows the suspicion and reserve of 
a man among his intellectual superiors. And indeed, with 
Poggio and Valla as his secretaries, Bessarion and Isidore among 
his Cardinals, and the keen eyes of iEneas Sylvius on his 
diplomacy, there was some excuse for the misgivings of an 
ordinary man. Eugenius could, however, give his confidence 
very freely to a few, though his choice of intimates was some- 
times regrettable, as in the case of Vitelleschi and Scarampo. 
His attitude to humanism was encouraging but not enthusiastic. 
The Council of Ferrara-Florence had given great stimulus to 
the movement, and many of the scholars who came over in the 
train of John Palseologos remained as the masters of the new 
learning. Plethon stayed in Florence to be the literary adviser 
of Cosimo de Medici. Bessarion and Isidore came back again 
to join the Curia. Intellect ranked higher than ever ; the chief 
lessons which iEneas deduced from the Council of Basle were 
the consummate importance of humanism and the ineffectiveness 
of men of " more soul than eloquence " in that rather pedantic 
assembly. Greek manuscripts began to pour into Italy with the 
cultured refugees, who fled with their literary treasures before 
the advancing Turk. 

Eugenius showed some enthusiasm for art, but his intentions 
were better than his taste. He admired the beautiful gates of 
Donatello which he had known so well in Florence, but he 
employed a second-rate artist, Filarete, to carry out the same 
idea in Rome. The iron gates of St. Peter's are not altogether 
a success, but they remain as a monument to the goodwill of 
Eugenius IV. He is more to be congratulated for his restoration 
of the Pantheon and for his Fra Angelico frescoes. As a true 
Venetian he was chiefly in his element when he was planning 
gorgeous ceremonies, and he was fortunate in the opportunities 



EECOVBEY: MARTIN V. AND EUGENIUS IV. 261 

which his reign afforded for this delightful pursuit. He wa6 
fortunate too in being a tall good-looking man, who could play 
his part in a pageant without looking ridiculous. The meeting 
with John Palseologos was probably the happiest day of his 
troubled life, and one is glad to know that he had not sufficient 
insight to gauge the hollowness of the splendour of this occasion. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
THE RENAISSANCE POPES, a.d. 1447-1471 

IT is easy to sympathise with the Cardinals who elected the 
scholar-bishop of Bologna to the Papacy as Nicolas V. 
(1447-1455). The wars of Martin V. and the blunders of 
Eugenius IV. had produced a longing for peace and plain-sailing, 
and of these things the temperament of Nicolas was a guarantee. 
The conclave of 1447 met under ominous conditions. Alfonso 
of Naples was encamped with his army on the hills above Rome, 
ready to influence the new election with the sword. Only the 
fear of him stifled a dangerous outbreak of democracy under the 
leadership of Porcaro, the Rienzi of the fifteenth century. The 
election was entirely unexpected. The crowd had expected the 
election of Prospero Colonna, but " he who goes into the conclave 
a Pope comes out a Cardinal," was the wise reflection of iEneas 
Silvius. There was great rejoicing at the election of the gentle 
student Pope : his aims were the aspirations of his subjects, and 
his tastes were shared and understood by the best of his con- 
temporaries. "We intend to strengthen the bishops," he an- 
nounced, " and hope to maintain our own power most surely by 
not usurping that of others." The same spirit in politics 
prompted his dealings with Germany and Italy. 

In Germany his business was to complete the formal act of 
union, which was expressed in February, 1448, in the Concordat 
of Vienna. The terms seem to be so complete a surrender that 
we are inclined to wonder how Germany was induced to accept 
them. The explanation lies in the condition of the country. 
Frederick III. could not stand alone against the princes : he 
needed the papal alliance to supply him with outward dignity 
and an apparent moral purpose. The Bishops were frankly 
bought over, with a grant of the disputed privilege of reserva- 
tions for their lifetime only. Such a peace could not endure, 
but it served its immediate purpose. The Concordat of Vienna 
and the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges contain the fruits of the 
conciliar movement. The results were dangerously inadequate, 
for the Papacy had postponed the day of reckoning until the 

262 



THE EENAISSANCE POPES 263 

next century, when Europe was to accumulate fresh scores to 
deepen the old. 

The abdication of Felix V. followed the Concordat. Nicolas 
treated his harmless rival with characteristic consideration, and 
the way was made as easy for him as possible. He was allowed 
to keep the outward honours of a Pope in his own dominions, 
and he was given the first place after Nicolas in the precedence 
of Europe. His supporters were forgiven and confirmed in their 
offices. The anti-pope had nothing to complain of, and, re- 
cognising this, he gave no further trouble. 

Nicolas carried out his peace policy as thoroughly in Italy 
as elsewhere. He restored the Colonnesi to their possessions 
and the Bentivogli to Bologna. When, in 1450, Sforza put an 
end to the democratic disorders in Milan, which had followed 
the death of Filippo Visconti, Nicolas accepted him as Duke of 
Milan, and hailed him as another peacemaker. To his most 
dangerous enemy, Porcaro, Nicolas was injudiciously mild. He 
ought ; perhaps, to have recognised the serious character which 
a liberty movement invariably took among the inflammable 
Romans. On his accession, he sent Porcaro into honorary exile 
as Podesta of Anagni, whence he returned to Rome and raised 
for a second time the cry of independence. He was still allowed 
to be at large, but he was sent to Bologna, the home of lawless- 
ness, on " ticket-of-leave ". Here he formed another conspiracy 
to seize Nicolas and the Cardinals at Mass, to abolish papal 
government, and restore the Roman Republic. In 1452 Porcaro 
fled to Rome to join his nephew with three hundred soldiers and 
to carry out the coup oVe'tat. But his escape was reported to the 
Pope before he reached Rome, and his nephew's army had 
already been detected by the police. This time Nicolas could 
not afford to be lenient, and Porcaro's execution put an end to 
the worst danger the Pope had to face. Like Rienzi, Porcaro 
can be interpreted in many ways. Some of his contemporaries 
saw in him "a worthy man who loved his country"; others 
looked on him as the incarnation of sedition. He is probably 
most fairly explained as a literary dreamer with a turn for 
practical affairs. His plot was ill-conceived and unluckily timed. 
The democratic cause was always popular in Rome, and the 
fifteenth century was likely to give it special welcome because 
humanism pointed naturally to democracy, and Rienzi had 
already made the two movements one. But it was unfortunate 
for Porcaro that the Pope whom he sought to overthrow should 
be beloved of every humanist in Rome, himself a man of letters, 
and not without sympathy for Roman freedom as far as it was 



264 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

compatible with papal government. The popularity of Nicolas V. 
among those who would otherwise have sympathised with Porcaro 
robbed the conspiracy of all possibility of success. Twelve years 
later he might have had a better chance. 

In 1450 Nicolas V. held a jubilee in Home which brought in 
an immense amount of money, all of which was spent in beauti- 
fying the city. Two hundred pilgrims were killed in a crush on 
the bridge of St. Angelo, and the Pope therefore had the bridge 
widened and built an exquisite memorial chapel to the victims. 
The jubilee was interrupted by the plague, and hardly had the 
consternation died away before the news of an approaching visit 
of Frederick III. began to cause something like a general panic. 
But the Italians need not have feared the coming of the power- 
less Emperor. A prince who could not hold his own in Germany 
was not likely to succeed in making good the Imperial claims in 
Italy. Frederick's behaviour soon persuaded Italy and Nicolas 
that he meant no harm, and the cities expressed their relief in 
magnificent pageants of welcome. iEneas Silvius enjoys telling 
us of the splendid meeting between Frederick and his child-bride 
Leonora of Naples at Siena, in which he himself played so impor- 
tant a part. The wedding and the coronation of the Emperor 
in Rome was as glorious as empty magnificence could make it. 
But politically Frederick's visit had not the slightest importance. 
At Florence he negotiated with Sforza, who sought investiture, 
but when Frederick tried to turn it to profit by seeking tribute, 
Sforza showed what he thought of the beggar-Emperor by re- 
fusing the privilege unless he could get it for nothing. Poverty 
in a prince was an unforgivable sin in Italy of the fifteenth 
century, and Frederick's attempt to mediate between Venice and 
Florence was treated with contempt on this account. 

In 1453 the disaster fell which darkened the pontificate of 
Nicolas V., and turned the sunlight of his peace to gloom. 
Repeated appeals of the Eastern Emperor for help against the 
Turks had been ignored or inadequately answered. Now the 
news came that Constantinople had fallen. Nicolas was not 
to blame as much as many of his contemporaries : he had sent 
an expedition in 1452, and he had done what he could to stir 
the princes of Europe. But he felt it as a personal blow, and 
iEneas Silvius, writing in the spirit of Job's comforter, expressed 
the feeling of which Nicolas was all too conscious : " Historians 
of the Roman pontiffs, when they reach your time, will write : 
1 Nicholas V., a Tuscan, was Pope for so many years. He 
recovered the patrimony of the Church from the hands of 
tyrants ; he gave union to the divided Church ; he canonised 



THE RENAISSANCE POPES 265 

Bernardino of Siena ; he built the Vatican and splendidly 
restored St. Peter's ; he celebrated the Jubilee, and crowned 
Frederick III.' All this will be glorious to your fame, but will 
be obscured by the doleful addition : ' In his time Constantinople 
was taken and plundered (or it may be burned and razed) by the 
Turks. . . .' Your Holiness did what you could, and no blame 
can justly attach to you. Yet the ignorance of posterity will 
blame you when it hears that in your time Constantinople was 
lost." .Eneas was right as to the importance which posterity 
would attach to the event, but he could not foresee in what way 
it would be regarded as a milestone in history. The immediate 
effect of the catastrophe on the Papacy was to create a sudden 
diversion of political energy. It opens an epoch in which the 
test of a Pope's statesmanship was his zeal for the Crusade. 
Nicolas V. responded as readily as he could to the demands of 
the crisis. He preached the Crusade with scholarly eloquence, 
and sent his envoys to exhort the princes of Europe to set aside 
their mutual quarrels and to unite against the enemy of religion. 
He welcomed the peace of Lodi in 1454 as the first step to- 
wards an Italian expedition, but Italy showed no inclination to 
take the lead, and the attitude of Europe was discouraging. 
Frederick III. and the German princes were wordily sympathetic, 
and used the crusading diets to advance their own interests. 
They ridiculed the zeal of Philip of Burgundy, the only genuine 
crusader among the host of plausible lion-hearts, who protested 
everything and committed themselves to nothing. 

The failure of Nicolas to rouse Europe against the Turks is 
easily explained. As a religious ideal the crusading spirit was 
dead : politically, it had been replaced by the spirit of nationality 
in England and France, and in Germany and Italy by the 
particularist interests of princes and cities. /Eneas Silvius, 
whose political psychology is always brilliant, thus expressed 
his impression of crusading Councils in Germany: "We look on 
Pope and Emperor alike as names in a story or heads in a 
picture. Each state has its own king : there are as many 
princes as there are houses. How will you persuade this mul- 
titude of rulers to take up arms ? " Nothing but passionate 
conviction could supply the necessary persuasion, and Nicolas 
himself was conscientious rather than enthusiastic in his 
crusading policy. For he was a man whose dominant idea 
really excluded all others, and he had given himself with intense 
self-devotion to the adornment of Rome and the revival of 
learning. Books and pictures meant far more to him than 
soldiers or cities, for "to create solid and stable convictions in 



266 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

the minds of the uncultured masses there must be something 
that appeals to the eye : a popular faith sustained only by 
doctrines will never be anything but feeble and vacillating. 
But if the authority of the Holy See were visibly displayed in 
majestic buildings, imperishable memorials, and witnesses seem- 
ingly planted by the hand of God Himself, belief would grow 
and strengthen like a tradition from one generation to another, 
and all the world would accept and revere it." In these words 
Nicolas V. expressed the ideal of his pontificate : in its fulfil- 
ment we find the reflection both of his age and of his 
individuality. We see him as the friend of Cosimo de Medici, 
the lover of exquisite manuscripts, the patron of an " army" of 
artists and builders, and the director of artistic and literary 
toil. He saw Rome as a mine of hidden beauty which it was 
his dream to bring to light. It remained at his death a dream 
unfulfilled, for his plans were too vast for one Pope to accomplish, 
and the gift of Renaissance beauty to Rome grew sinister in the 
eyes of Europe when Constantine's city fell into the hands of 
Mahomet. 

Nicolas tried to carry out too much. He planned and 
began the rebuilding of St. Peter's on the lines afterwards carried 
out by Julius II. He rebuilt most of the Capitol, and the city 
walls. He began the fountain of Trevi, and reorganised the 
water-supply. In the Vatican he built the Cortile del Belvidere 
and the library. This was not the end of his plan, but his work 
as a whole is sadly incomplete, and it suffered, as the artistic 
plans of the Popes always did, from the lack of continuity in 
papal history. Nicolas was succeeded by a "Philistine" Pope, 
and his schemes had to wait a long time for a worthy successor. 
To literature he gave still greater enthusiasm ; the eight years of 
his pontificate gave the banner of humanism to the Popes, and 
committed them to the Renaissance as irrevocably as Germany 
had already bound itself to the cause of Reformation. The 
scholars and artists of Nicolas were an army to fight the 
Councils : the cry for reform was to be met with a display of 
culture; Teutonic stolidity was to be opposed by Italian civilfa, 
and the long-winded theology of the opponents of the Papacy 
was to be answered by the nimble wit of classical scholars. 
Nicolas knew that a patron who wants good work must be 
tolerant of artistic weaknesses, and not too rigid a censor of 
conduct. Among his scholars were men as notorious as they 
were distinguished. The coarse jokes of Poggio did not debar 
him from favour in the Curia, and Valla's brilliant intellect was 
a passport for his atheism. The quarrel between Poggio and 



THE RENAISSANCE POPES 267 

Valla was an exercise in literary scurrility, but Nicolas turned 
a deaf ear to it, and kept them both in his service. Nothing but 
a lack of skill could alienate the favour of the scholar-Pope : he 
could forgive the obscenity of Valla, but not the inaccuracy of 
George of Trapezus. He sent his learned men all over Europe 
in search of manuscripts, and financed scholarship on a scale 
equal to his appreciation. When he died in March, 1455, he was 
lamented with good reason by the crowd of scholars, among 
them a large proportion of refugee Greeks from Constantinople, 
who were dependent on his bounty. 

Alfonso Borgia, the old Spanish Cardinal who succeeded 
Nicolas as Calixtus III. (1455-1458), made short work of the 
scholars. He shared the resentment of the uncultured many 
at the artistic expenditure of Nicolas at a time when money was 
urgently needed for the Crusade. Calixtus inherited the heredi- 
tary Spanish hatred of the Moslems, and he concentrated the 
feverish energy of old age on two objects, the Crusade and the 
aggrandisement of his nephews. The year appointed for the 
Crusade opened a few months after Calixtus III.'s accession, but 
the news that reached Rome was not encouraging, and the 
apathy of Europe stood revealed. In most cases the forces 
raised for the Crusade were being used for other purposes. 
Alfonso of Naples had built a fleet, but he was using it against 
Genoa. Charles VII. of France was spending the Tenth raised 
for the Crusade in a war against Naples. Meanwhile, the papal 
fleet under Cardinal Scarampo was putting away time in winning 
small victories on unimportant islands. The relief of Belgrad 
by Hunyadi and Capistrano was the only relief, and even these 
tidings were accompanied by dismal accounts of the hostility to 
the Papacy in Germany. iEneas Silvius, with all his diplomatic 
skill, and his genius for cajolery, could not break the tide of 
German opposition. Martin Mayr and his patron, the Arch- 
bishop of Mainz, expressed the grievances of Germany in a 
letter of congratulation to iEneas, when, in 1457, Calixtus forced 
open the door of the Cardinalate, as YEneas expresses it, on his 
behalf. The answer to German opposition is found in the 
" Germania " of iEneas, and in the benefits bestowed by Calixtus 
on the Archbishop of Mainz. But there was a spirit behind the 
events which could not be defeated by words or gifts, and the 
pontificate of Calixtus contributed to the growing conflict be- 
tween the soul of Italy and the soul of Germany. 

Meanwhile, the name of Borgia was already beginning to col- 
lect the antipathies of Princes and Cardinals in Italy. Calixtus 
had already created as Cardinals two good-looking young nephews 



268 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

who had nothing to recommend them but their youth and high 
spirits. He now embarked on a quarrel with Naples for the 
benefit of a third. He refused to recognise the bastard son of 
Alfonso as heir to the kingdom, claiming it as a fief of the 
Church, and establishing his nephew, Don Pedro Luis, in two 
Neapolitan duchies. Meanwhile, Rodrigo Borgia and his brother 
exercised an informal tyranny in Home, and caused the ostra- 
cism of all the Cardinals who were likely to interfere with them. 
Scarampo was kept at sea; Carrajal and Nicolas of Cusa were 
sent to Germany, while the saintly Capranica was deprived of 
power. The effect of the Pope's nephews was to rob their uncle 
of his reputation. Calixtus was a harmless old man with an 
exaggerated weakness for his own family, and an unbounded 
enthusiasm for the Crusade. When he died in August, 1458, the 
only "objet d'art" mentioned in the inventory of his bedroom 
furniture was a copy of his crusading vow elaborately framed. 
And yet he is better known to history as the uncle of Rodrigo, 
and the founder of a family connection which brought the 
Papacy to its lowest depth of moral infamy. 

Calixtus was succeeded by iEneas Silvius Piccolomini. With 
his accession the Renaissance comes into its own. Nicolas V. 
had patronised the humanists, Calixtus III. had been a target for 
their criticism: in Pius II. (1458-1464), they hailed one of them- 
selves. But they were doomed to disappointment, for it im- 
mediately appeared that the pontificate of Pius II. was not to be 
interpreted in the light of the career of iEneas Silvius Piccolomini. 
iEneas had already been at work for some years uprooting the 
wild oats which he had sown in his youth as secretary at the 
Council of Basle, and as envoy at the German court. And yet his 
reputation and his character made it difficult for his denuncia- 
tion of his early exploits to seem sincere. He could not help 
giving dramatic expression even to his deepest convictions, and 
his contemporaries, recognising the artist, suspected artifice. 
When he urged them to " accept Pius, and reject iEneas," they 
made a mental reservation of the novels of iEneas — still popular 
in circles which Pius was pledged to condemn. They recalled 
the love-letters which iEneas had written for young Sigismund of 
Tyrol, and found them out of keeping with the tone of the papal 
Bulls of Pius. They whispered rumours of his personal indiscre- 
tions, and contrasted them with the high standard which he 
demanded of his Cardinals. All this was extremely unfair, but 
it is the usual tone applied by criticism to those whose characters 
are plastic and easily moulded by circumstances. Pius was pro- 
bably quite as much in earnest preaching reform at Basle as at 



THE BENAISSANCE POPES 269 

Mantua, pronouncing the Bull " Execrabilis," but it was hard for 
more rigid intellects to accept the possibility of so complete a 
change of front. Hence the interest of his pontificate is not to 
be found in the intrinsic importance of its events, but in the 
degree in which they impressed themselves on the mind of the 
Pope, and in the form which they assumed when he gave them 
expression. 

The first of these influences was the conception of the 
Papacy itself. As soon as he had achieved his election, the 
brilliant traditions of his office possessed his imagination ; his 
poet's sense of the oneness of the past and present brought 
back to life the forgotten dreams of a world-wide spiritual do- 
minion, and gave him for its concrete expression the ideal of 
the Crusade. We seem to watch the deepening of the impres- 
sion as he journeyed through Italy, on his way to the Congress 
of Mantua, which had been summoned for 1459. He liked to 
be splendidly received, although his tastes were all for simplicity 
and gentle quiet, because he had a great sense of the dignity of 
his mission. In the same spirit he made peace with Ferrante 
of Naples : he did not want to be worried with an Italian war 
until the great enterprise was launched, and yet he managed to 
leave a loophole in his agreement with Ferrante to enable him 
to revert to the French policy in Naples if occasion demanded it. 

His progress through Italy was not a mere pageant : it had a 
deep political importance as well, and every city which received 
him took its place in his mind with permanent results. With 
his own town of Siena there had been difficulties, but they sub- 
sided when he was there in person, and for two months he 
stayed among his own people, whose welcome meant more to 
him than all Italy. While he was enjoying the homage of his 
Alma Mater — all the sweeter because he had once been regarded 
as an indiscreet son — he made the plan for the beautifying of 
his little native village of Corsignano, which was to be his best 
contribution to the Renaissance of architecture. Corsignano, 
transformed into Pienza in honour of the Piccolomini, is a perfect 
example of the simplicity of Italian building in the transition 
from Gothic to Classical style. It is also full of the character of 
Pius himself, with its wide open views of Italian landscape, its 
perfect command of detail and use of restraint, and its complete 
fulfilment of the desired effect. 

From Siena Pius went to Florence, where he was received 
with honour, although Cosimo de Medici diplomatically stayed 
in bed. At stormy Bologna he was uncomfortable, for the town 
was nearly in rebellion, and Pius had to enter it between two 



— 



270 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

lines of Milanese troops. But at Ferrara Borso d'Este received 
him with open arms ; from Ferrara to Mantua he sailed up the 
Po in a forest of splendid ships, and his entry to Mantua was as 
glorious as the Marquis Gonzaga could make it. Here Sforza's 
wife and children visited him, and little Ippolita Sforza 
charmed him with her Latin speech of welcome. Then the 
envoys of the Council began to arrive — not nearly fast enough 
or many enough to satisfy Pius, and before many days he be- 
gan to discover the deplorable truth that he himself was the 
only whole-hearted crusader there. The Emperor's envoys were 
inadequate, the Cardinals complained of discomfort, the Princes 
were full of their own quarrels, and the Italians cared more for 
the peace of Italy than for anything else. All the genius and 
conviction of Pius spent itself in his great crusading sermon, 
which was a masterpiece of persuasive prose. He recalled the 
great crusades of the Congress of Clermont, and the magnificent 
enthusiasm of Europe when, with one voice, it shouted "Dieu le 
veult ! ". All that could be done with such material Pius 
managed to do, but the Congress showed no disposition to sink 
differences and antipathies in the common cause. Heimburg, 
the personal enemy of Pius, was there to neutralise his appeal 
with the repetition of personal scandals, and the Germans were 
all too ready to listen to him. France flaunted the Pragmatic 
Sanction, and quarrelled with the Pope's alliance with Ferrante. 
Sforza cared only for Italian peace and the exclusion of 
foreigners, especially the French. Florence was jealous of 
Venice, who was likely to be the chief gainer in the crusading 
enterprise, and Cosimo was further influenced by loyalty to the 
French cause in Naples. In all the grievances one common note 
is traceable, which is a vague distrust of Pius, a tendency to ask 
what he was getting out of it all, to resent his phrases and his 
rhetoric, and to question his political sincerity. In spite of this, 
Pius managed to collect a larger Crusade than might have been 
expected, though it was far less than he demanded, and too 
small to be in any sense adequate. 

Before he left Mantua in 1460, Pius published the Bull 
" Execrabilis," in which the practice, common among refractory 
princes, of appealing to a future General Council was denounced 
as " an execrable abuse, unknown to early times ". This was 
the rebuke of Pius to the selfishness of the national churches, 
which he condemned as the chief cause of the lack of crusading 
ardour. The councils were responsible for this selfishness, and 
Pius was consciously destroying the results of the conciliar 
movement. As the author of the Bull " Execrabilis," he stood 



THE RENAISSANCE POPES 271 

before the world as the exponent of the old-fashioned Hilde- 
brandine ideal. His new role was not a popular one, and it lent 
itself to further charges of insincerity, for, as a young man, 
^Eneas had made his name as the disciple of Gaspar Schlick, 
the famous anti-papal Chancellor of Frederick II. Since the 
days of the Council of Basle. .Eneas had honestly changed his 
mind, but, unfortunately, his reputation would not bear the 
strain of the demand made upon it. and the Bull became a use- 
ful tool in the hands of his enemies. 

When Pius left Mantua in 1460 he had learnt more about 
Italy and about his own position than when he had set out. In 
the quie: Umbrian country-side which he loved he pondered 
over these things until the autumn brought tidings of riot from 
Rome and recalled him to face the inevitable crisis which recurs 
like a refrain throughout papal history. Porcaro's rebellion had 
left an aftermath of discontent which Pius had to reap in the 
riots of one Tiburzio. But the circumstances of 1460 were lacking 
in dignity and importance, and Pius had no difficulty in restoring 
order after a few executions. His Italian policy, always a 
secondary consideration to him, henceforth centred in Xaples. 
His worst enemies were the conclottieri who openly bid for war 
at any price., and entered into mutual agreements to oppose the 
crusading peace which was the object of the Pope. " Who wants 
peace?"' wrote Picinino to his opponent Sforza, in 1463 — <; No 
one, save priests and merchants, the Roman Curia, and the 
traders of Venice and Florence. ... In peace, we are despised 
and sent to the plough ; in war, we become mighty and may 
follow the example of Francesco Sforza, who has raised himself 
to a dukedom." We can imagine the disdain which was felt 
by these great masters of the fine art of war for the amateur 
army of dilettante crusaders, which was all that Europe had to 
offer against the Turks. Under these conditions the peace of 
Pius was dearly bought. He might plead — -'We fought for 
Christ when we defended Ferrante ; we warred against the Turks 
when we smote the lands of Malatesta," but the argument did 
not carry conviction to his critics, who noticed that the war in 
Xaples brought fiefs to the Piccolomini. and saw in the struggle 
with Sigismondo Malatesta the expression of vindictive personal 
hostility. 

The policy of Pius in Xaples involved him in trouble with 
France. With the accession of Louis XL in 1461. Pius hoped 
that the aggressive attitude assumed by France at the Congress 
of Mantua would cease, for Louis as Dauphin had recognised 
that the danger to the French monarchy was greater when 



272 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

Church privileges were exercised by the nobility than when they 
were left in the hands of the Pope. At first his hopes seemed 
likely to be fulfilled: the Pragmatic Sanction was abolished, 
and the warmest courtesies were exchanged between Paris and 
Home. But the question of Naples gradually broke through the 
harmony with insistent discord. Louis declared himself the 
champion of Re'ne' of Anjou, and Pius, concealing the extent to 
which he was committed to Ferrante, replied to Louis's envoys 
with "many words but no good deeds". An open quarrel 
soon followed, the French Cardinals were recalled to Paris, and 
Pius, seeing in France the lost recruiting-ground of the best 
crusaders, gave rein to his passionate resentment. The restora- 
tion of Gallican liberties followed his explosion of wrath, and 
Louis is henceforth to be counted among his enemies. 

France was not the only obstacle to the Catholic peace of 
Europe. George Podiebrad of Bohemia had failed in his attempt 
to serve two masters. In 1460 he had made peace with Pius, 
leaving his creed vaguely expressed in order to satisfy his 
Hussite subjects. In the course of two years his position be- 
came impossible, and a Hussite conference in Rome created a 
definite breach between Pius and George. George Podiebrad 
was as good a diplomatist as Pius, and in the end he outwitted 
him. He became the agent of the anti-papal party, and the 
patron of a fantastic scheme for a secular Crusade by which 
he was to become King of Constantinople, supported by the 
combined forces of the enemies of Pius. It is not to be wondered 
at that a scheme so purely negative for every one except George 
failed to win many supporters, and the rival Crusade never 
became a serious source of anxiety to Pius. 

In his dealings with Germany, Pius was no more fortunate. 
Unlike Martin V. he had no talent for reaping the advantages 
of the misfortunes of others. Germany was in a deplorable state 
of purposeless disunion. Pius was drawn to Frederick III. in 
common opposition to territorialism, and the only chance for 
their cause lay in the lack of cohesion among their enemies. 
"Be of good cheer," he wrote to the disconsolate Emperor, "it 
is difficult to overthrow the Apostolic See and the Roman Empire 
at the same time. Their roots are planted too deep for the wind 
to prevail against them, although we who are poised on their 
summit must expect to feel the blast." All through his pontifi- 
cate Pius "felt the blast" with inconvenient severity, but his 
generalisation held good. The gale blew strongest from Austria, 
where the origin of his troubles was a quarrel between Duke 
Sigismund and Nicolas of Cusa. Pius was drawn into it when 



THE EENAISSANCE POPES 273 

Nicolas appealed to him, and his intervention brought Heim- 
burg forward once more. Whenever Pius and Heimburg are 
face to face, the personal motif predominates. Ever since Pius 
had laughed at the heated German sincerity of his rival envoy 
at the court of Eugenius, Heinburg had never lost an oppor- 
tunity of winning the scores of the plain blunt man over the 
orator. When Sigismund defied " Execrabilis " in 1461 and 
appealed to a General Council, the excommunication which 
followed was parried by Heimburg in a counter-attack on the 
character of Pius. " Let him consider his own past life," is the 
burden of the Austrian apologia. Some of the shafts of Heim- 
burg got home in spite of his raucous abusiveness. Pius had 
been trying ever since he became Pope to subdue in himself his 
love of poetry and classical literature. Nothing moved him 
more than Heimburg's references to " the tropical orator," who 
will only see straight " when his fit of wind is over . . . when 
he has sent away the Muses and has turned to the Canon Law ". 
The Muses had been banished with the other undesirable com- 
panions of the youth of iEneas Silvius, but their phantoms still 
haunted the middle-aged Pope, and to such as Heimburg he 
was still the subtle phrase-monger who had talked truth into 
falsehood and outwitted the Germans as the go-between of the 
Empire and the Papacy. As a matter of fact, Heimburg had 
overreached himself: his extravagant language had left a 
loophole for internal discord, and the quarrel between Pius and 
Sigismund remained a personal one, in spite of his efforts to 
give it a wider setting. This personal character of the troubles 
of Pius II. is a feature of his pontificate. His second great 
German quarrel with the Archbishop of Mainz was of the same 
nature, and in both cases the dispute only became dangerous 
when it was joined to something like a political movement. 
Heimburg and Diether of Mainz were individually defeated 
without much difficulty, but the movement to depose Frederick 
and arraign Pius before a General Council might have become 
serious if Pius had not created a diversion by the deposition of 
the rebel Archbishop. In 1464 a formal peace was made be- 
tween Sigismund and Pius, but it was too late to be of any use 
to Christendom. Germany had already made its great refusal, 
and the fate of the Crusade was sealed. 

Pius was hampered in Germany by the expert knowledge of 
the situation which he had acquired as an official of Frederick's 
court. In his policy he wavered between the claims of a spirit- 
ual overlord and the attitude of a foreign prince. Hence he could 
neither defeat the opposition in open attack, nor make good his 
18 



274 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

right to override it. The source of all his troubles lay in the 
personal bias with which he was credited ; he " approached 
German politics as a partisan where he should have appeared 
as an arbiter". He was under the impression that he was 
taking a short cut to a peace which would at least facilitate the 
Crusade. For the European policy of Pius II. must always be 
regarded as a prelude to his last great effort. His failure to 
convince Europe of his sincerity in the enterprise for which he 
was prepared to die, amounts to a tragedy. His contemporaries, 
it must be admitted, had their justification. His quaint attempt 
to convert the Sultan, by a long polemical pamphlet in his best 
literary style, looked very like playing with the situation. It 
was, in fact, a naive expression of the humanist's blind faith in 
the power of reason. His policy in Naples seemed to be framed 
with a view to enriching his own family : the Piccolomini fiefs 
were, however, a wedge driven into the heart of Naples as a 
guarantee for the galleys of Ferrante. " Whatever we do is con- 
strued for the worse," Pius wrote in pathetic enlightenment, and 
even his plan of going on the Crusade in person failed to produce 
the effect on which he had calculated. Philip of Burgundy, 
whose father had been killed by the Turks, had promised to go 
if any other prince did so too. Pius himself was greater than 
any other prince, since he was both Pope and King. " The 
noise of our plan will come as a crash of thunder and rouse the 
minds of the faithful to the defence of their religion," he wrote. 
But the crash did not raise the echo which was expected. Louis 
XL held obstinately aloof, and allied himself with Milan. 
Florence joined them out of jealousy of Venice, who was likely 
to be the chief gainer from the Crusade. Finally, intrigues in 
Burgundy delayed Philip's start, although he had welcomed the 
Pope's project with enthusiasm. 

Meanwhile Pius was undaunted. The discovery of alum 
mines at Tolfa brought in large sums of money to the papal 
treasury which were all devoted to the Crusade. It was to be 
the great act of atonement for the sins of the priesthood. The 
priests were to be exhorted to join, as examples to the 
princes : " Perchance when they see their master, the Vicar of 
Jesus Christ, though old and sick, advancing to the war, they 
will feel ashamed to stay at home ". Pius was not old in years, 
but he was delicate, and he suffered terribly from gout. In 1464 
he arrived at Ancona where the forces were to assemble. He 
was already ill, and the confusion which confronted him affected 
his spirits. He was not a good organiser, and on the road to 
Ancona he met crowds of crusaders who were discouraged at the 



THE KENAISSANCE POPES 275 

first stage by the lack of provisions at the seaport, and the 
inadequate arrangements for mobilisation. Venice alone was 
efficient, but her efficiency was depressing to the rest of the 
world, and particularly to the penniless enthusiasts who flocked 
to Ancona without any means of subsistence and awaited in vain 
the arrival of transports. 

In August it became apparent that the Pope was dying. The 
Venetian ships at last began to arrive, and he watched them 
from his window overlooking the port, his whole heart set on 
living to embark. If the Pope could die a crusader, surely the 
Crusade would succeed. He could not believe in the possibility 
of failure, and he was fortunate enough not to be disillusioned. 
The Crusade of Pius never could have succeeded, and death 
saved him from knowing it. The shadow of mistrust still 
hovered over him, but on the whole he died a hero. There 
is a certain simplicity in the project on which he had built so 
many hopes, which is in keeping with the most lovable things 
known about him. He was always happiest in the country, 
among birds and trees and peasants, living quietly and un- 
pretentiously, and never far from his favourite books. For in 
spite of his intentions Pius remained all through his life a 
humanist at heart. " Time after time I have put aside poets 
and histories," he tells us, " but like a moth round a candle I 
flutter back to my ruin." The instinct of self-expression was 
too strong in him to be thwarted by his sense of the decorous. 
All his life he had written books revealing the inner workings 
of his mind, from the improper novel of his early youth to the 
history of Asia, which embodies the dream of the crusader-Pope. 
It is through his books that we know Pius so much more inti- 
mately than most of the Popes. He is the first papal historian 
who writes to make a picture of his own times for posterity, 
and his own character stands out in the foreground. This is 
his real importance in papal history. He was not a great patron 
he was a critic rather than an admirer of contemporary literature, 
for he held that " poets and orators ought to be supreme or they 
are nothing ". He was not even a great scholar, according to 
the academic standard of his age. He was a free-lance, a scien- 
tific investigator of humanity, a lover of by-ways and subtleties, 
readier to receive impressions than to impress others, " not a 
man to mould the world but to be moulded by it ". He left the 
problem of the Renaissance Papacy unsolved : how far could it 
adapt itself to the new spirit without losing its essential char- 
acter ? Between the Scylla and Charybdis now in sight, could 
a course be found for St. Peter's ships without disaster from 



276 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

paganism on the one hand and the Reformation on the other ? 
Everything depended on the helmsman. 

The seven years' pontificate of Paul. II. (1464-1471), who 
succeeded Pius II., has on the whole a negative value in papal 
history. He did not attempt to pursue the peace-policy of 
Pius, and yet his assertion of an aggressive attitude was not 
pronounced enough to succeed. His policy was always non- 
committal ; it was not imperial, not Italian, and not humanist, 
and yet he did not definitely discard any of these attitudes. 
Against George Podiebrad of Bohemia he adopted the practical 
expedient of using Mathias Corvinus of Hungary, who had put 
himself at the head of a baronial revolt. The Bohemian war 
was disastrous in the face of the Turkish advance, but Paul 
cared more for immediate advantage than for larger ends. In 
1468 Frederick III. visited him in Rome, and tried to persuade 
Paul to recognise his own claim both on Bohemia and on Hun- 
gary. But Paul had other ideas, and on the death of George 
Podiebrad in 1471, Ladislas of Poland succeeded to the dis- 
tracted kingdom. Ladislas was a Catholic, but he had to tolerate 
Utraquism, which had nourished under George's ill-defined 
orthodoxy until it had taken root in the national life. 

In Italy, Paul tried unsuccessfully to carry on the war of the 
Papacy against the Malatesta, until in 1470 the combined in- 
fluences of Ferrante and the Crusade led him to make peace. 
Meanwhile he was occupied with the most significant struggle 
of his pontificate, which brought down on him the hostility of 
humanism. In his own way Paul was just as much a child of 
the Renaissance as Pius : he had indeed a greater and wider 
love of beautiful treasures, but, unlike his predecessor, his mind 
was as decorous as his person. Pius II. had not always been 
kind to the humanists who thronged round him, but his dis- 
favour took the form of contempt for their mediocrity rather 
than disapproval of their morals. Paul II. had a rooted dislike 
of the mental and moral outlook of the humanists of 1460-1470. 
He resented their claim to be outside religion and morals. He 
saw that it was unreasonable to punish heresy in Bohemia and 
to condone atheism in Rome. From the other side the quarrel 
began with Paul's schemes for reforming his household in 1464. 
He decided to abolish the crowd of abbreviators, or under- 
secretaries, whom the Pope found it difficult either to control, to 
employ, or to pay. Most of the abbreviators were humanists, 
among them the historian Platina, and their literary vengeance 
has made it difficult to form a just estimate of Paul's character. 
His other great fight with humanism was his attack on the 



THE RENAISSANCE POPES 277 

Roman Academy in 1468. The Academy had begun as a genuine 
association of scholars and antiquarians who gathered round the 
Stoic teacher Pomponius Lectus. It had degenerated into a 
silly and self-conscious institution which wasted its energies in 
profane attacks on Christianity, and gained its recruits from the 
unemployed abbreviators. Paul II. was obliged to punish the 
Academy, which flaunted its emancipation in his face. He ac- 
cordingly arrested and imprisoned Platina and Pomponius. But 
the futility and childishness of the Stoic philosophers, who 
promised " to celebrate in prose and verse the name of Paul " if 
he would set them free, convinced Paul of their essential harm- 
lessness. The Academicians regained their liberty, and Platina 
showed his gratitude by writing an unfriendly life of Paul in his 
'•Lives of the Popes," in which be describes him as "a great 
enemy and despiser of human learning, branding those for 
heretics that gave their minds to it". The Academy and the 
fortunes of Platina revived under Sixtus IV., but Paul II. can- 
not fairly be condemned for his attitude towards a corporation 
which attacked religion with the weapons of buffoonery. 

Through his supposed attack on humanism Paul alienated 
many of the Cardinals, who, like Bessarion. were its strong sup- 
porters. His high-handed dealings with the pretensions of the 
College lost for him the sympathy of the rest. He wanted the 
Cardinals to be magnificent and splendid but entirely dependent 
on himself. He liked to walk among them in processions, his 
own the tallest and most distinguished figure of the dignified and 
imposing band of princes. He had no closer bond with them 
than this, and he did not care for intimate intercourse of any 
kind. Even his three nephews were not specially favoured, and 
impartiality and kindliness were his chief social aims. He 
hated to refuse petitions, and therefore gave few audiences. He 
dreaded above all things to condemn a criminal to death. And 
yet he could be severe on occasions, as when he would suddenly 
flash round on an impostor with the words. "You are not speak- 
ing the truth". "He is surrounded by darkness," was Am- 
manatrs description of him, and the knowledge that he was not 
loved saddened him, for, as he said, " a little wormwood can 
pollute a hive of honey ". 

But the real life of Paul II. was among inanimate things. 
His companions were his treasures, and his delight was in the 
jewels which he took to bed with him that he might feast his 
eyes on them in the hours of the night when he was kept awake 
by asthma. He loved to strive with other great collectors for 
an object of preciosity on which he had set his heart. His 



278 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

greatest triumphs were those in which he successfully — but 
always honestly — outwitted an Alfonso, or an Este, or a Medici 
in the purchase of a vase or a stone. Even in this passion, 
which was shared by so many of his contemporaries, he was not 
understood. His pleasure in beautiful things was aesthetic 
while theirs was antiquarian ; they collected for display, while 
he enjoyed his treasures in solitude. He was a Renaissance 
Pope, for the Renaissance had made him, but he was more con- 
spicuous as an example of individuality in the age when the 
individual personality first comes into play among political 
forces. 



CHAPTER XXIY. 
THE SECULAR PAPACY, 1471-1503. 

IF we apply the written language of the average canonist of 
the fourteenth century to the Papacy in the time of 
Sixtus IV. (1471-1484), we shall find that the distance 
travelled in the hundred years is so great that it seems like a 
break in the continuity of papal history. But it was the world 
which had changed, and the rise of the nations which had dis- 
possessed the Papacy by its universality as completely as the 
Popes themselves had triumphed over the claims of the Empire 
in the early Middle Ages. The conception of the Papacy as a 
world-state, binding the kingdoms of Europe in a harmonious 
circle of common obedience, could no longer stand against the 
vigorous realism of the new era. " The spell of dogmatic tran- 
scendentalism " was broken by the dominance of political 
interests and practical methods which characterise the fifteenth 
century. The efforts of Martin V. to restore the temporal power, 
the struggles of Eugenius IV. with the papal vicars, the syste- 
matic nepotism of Sixtus IV., and the definite family policy of 
Alexander VI. are progressive stages in the process of readjust- 
ment by which the Papacy was to be transformed into a modern 
political state. 

Side by side with the growth of consolidation we find another 
tendency, equally inevitable — the process of secularisation. 
Neither of these forces is quite new in the fifteenth century — they 
are both in a sense inherent in the rise of temporal power which 
had begun with Hildebrand, and perhaps even before him, in 
the evolution of the Patrimony. But a movement which dom- 
inates one age often has its roots in another, and the secular 
Papacy, like the Renaissance itself, belongs none the less to the 
fifteenth century, although we can trace its beginnings in the 
ages preoccupied by other principles and interests. The fifteenth 
century Popes were wise in their generation : those succeeded 
best who best played their neighbours' game, and gave up the 
attempt to reduce a non-religious age to obedience to a spiritual 
institution. Conspicuous among the failures we find Eugenius 

279 



280 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

IV., wounded in his ecclesiastical capacity by his political 
antagonists and unable to descend from the clerical high-horse. 
Even more tragic was the attempt of Pius II. to revive the 
theocratic principle, and to lead Europe to the Crusades, un- 
conscious of the fact that his failure is both the cause and the 
result of his success as a temporal prince. Popes like Nicolas 
V. and Paul II. had shown superior intuition by their identifica- 
tion of the Papacy with the Renaissance. The essence of the 
new monarchy was popularity : the Renaissance Popes, like the 
Medici of Florence and the Tudors of England, owed their 
strength to the fact that they gave their subjects what they 
wanted. The Italian subjects of the fifteenth-century Popes 
wanted strong local government, money to spend in pageants, 
and an ample satisfaction of their desire for beauty — all which 
is summed up in the word " civiltd ". 

The early fifteenth-century Popes, beginning with Martin V., 
had aimed at territorial monarchy, but they had not pursued 
it along any definite political line. Sixtus IV. chose out of 
the many alternatives the safest and most congenial, that of 
nepotism. He showed the aggressive family pride of a self- 
made man, whose very name was borrowed from another. As 
Francesco della Rovere he had been General of the Franciscans, 
and he was known as a learned man of limited outlook and 
boundless energy. Round him flocked his vigorous young 
nephews, one of whom, Piero Riario, had secured his election 
by judicious bribery among the Cardinals. The nepotism of 
earlier Popes had been haphazard favouritism : Sixtus used it 
deliberately in order to strengthen his position. He instantly 
made two young nephews Cardinals, and allowed the younger, 
the same Piero, to exhaust himself in debauchery so that he 
died in four years at the age of twenty-nine. For the other 
young Cardinal, Giuliano della Rovere, a more brilliant future 
was reserved. A third nephew, by his marriage with the daughter 
of Ferrante of Naples, was the pivot of a Neapolitan alliance on 
which turned the Italian policy of Sixtus. Another Della 
Rovere married the daughter of Federico of Urbino and became 
Duke of Sinigaglia, thus opening up the way to Romagna, which 
was the main objective. Romagna was to be the territorial 
expression of the Pope's personal monarchy, held, not by the 
old weak feudal tie, but by a strong family bond which was 
very nearly dynastic. That Sixtus IV. failed, as Alexander VI. 
was to fail, in founding an Italian dynasty was due to no de- 
ficiency of character but to the limitations of the Papacy. The 
Pope could play the political game as well as any of his con- 



THE SECULAK PAPACY 281 

temporary rulers ; he could bind territories to his family and 
his nephews to himself. But in an intensely personal age he 
alone could not perpetuate the personal tie. His children and 
his nephews, as such, had no claim on their subjects' allegiance, 
and on the death of a Pope, the cities and territories which he 
had ruled would remember their ecclesiastical obedience as an 
excuse to throw off their anomalous lords. Pontificates were 
short, and no Pope could ever count on influencing the election 
of his successor. In this lay the condemnation of nepotism as 
a political factor, which is illustrated by most of the papal 
families of the Renaissance, but pre-eminently in the lives of 
the Delia Rovere and the Borgia. 

The growing secularisation of the Papacy increased the 
worldly appearance of the Vatican Court. When Leonora of 
Naples came to Rome to marry Leonardo della Rovere her 
brothers and cousins-in-law gave her a magnificent reception, in 
which a wild man in sugar and a bear roasted in his skin played 
conspicuous parts. After the death of Cardinal Piero, Sixtus 
passed a series of sumptuary laws for the Cardinals forbidding 
them to hunt, or to wear short hose, bright colours, or long hair. 
He forebore from making Girolamo Riario a Cardinal when he 
succeeded his brother in his uncle's affection. Sixtus kept him 
a layman, and bought for him the lordship of Imola from the 
Duke of Milan, together with the hand of the Duke's splendid 
illegitimate daughter, Caterina. The Jubilee of 1175 attracted 
very few pilgrims except those who, like Ferrante of Naples, 
made it a cover for a political mission. Rumours were abroad 
in Europe of the debauchery of the Pope's family and the 
unseemliness of his court. In Italy, outraged decorum was 
allied to political apprehension. A league of the three great 
Northern powers — Milan, Florence, and Venice — was formed in 
1474, nominally to protect the peace of Italy, actually to keep a 
watchful eye on the Pope and the King of Naples. Sixtus failed 
in numerous attempts to break up the triple alliance which he 
rightly regarded as a barrier to his family policy. For various 
reasons Florence was the most probable aggressor, and at first 
Sixtus had taken some pains to propitiate her. He had allowed 
Lorenzo de Medici to buy the treasures of Paul II., and he had 
appointed the Medici as his bankers in Rome. 

Sixtus IV. and the Medici, as the two leading powers in 
Italy, were natural enemies. Florence had everything to gain in 
thwarting the plans of Sixtus in the Romagna : Sixtus could not 
get far without wounding the dominions of Florence. The 
trouble began with Imola. Florence had always wanted it. and 



282 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

now Milan had ceded it to the Pope's nephew. The circum- 
stances were aggravated by the refusal of Sixtus to make 
Giuliano de Medici a Cardinal, and the transference of the 
Pope's banking business from the Medici to the older Florentine 
firm of the Pazzi. When finally, in 1474, Giuliano della Rovere 
was engaged in putting down a rebellion in Spoleto, the inter- 
ference of Florence brought Paolo Vitelli, who had helped the 
rebels, to terms before he had been sufficiently humiliated. 
The inadequate results of the disturbance rankled in the mind 
of Sixtus, and led to the crisis connected with the Pazzi 
conspiracy in 1478. 

The Pazzi conspiracy was an attempt to overthrow the rule 
of the Medici in Florence, and its failure is the highest testimony 
to the popularity of the great tyrant house. The murder of 
Galeazzo Maria Sforza at Milan in 1476 had produced a wave 
of admiration for the ethics of political assassination, which 
infected a handful of discontented Florentines. Girolamo Riario, 
who foresaw disaster to his own position in the event of his 
uncle's death, used this spirit to rid himself of his arch-enemies, 
the Medici, by working on the rivalry of the Pazzi. Sixtus was 
equally anxious for the overthrow of Lorenzo, and recognised 
the danger of Girolamo's position now that his family connection 
with Milan was broken. But as Pope he could not go so far as 
to countenance assassination. The chosen assassin, Montesecco, 
had an interview with him in which Sixtus expressed his desire 
for the overthrow of the Medici without their death. He would 
not be caught by Girolamo's attempt to exhort from him a 
pardon for the murder before its committal. " You are a beast," 
was his answer tp his favourite ; " I tell you I do not wish any 
man's death, but a change of government." The Pope had 
washed his hands, but the criminal preparations went forward. 
Giuliano de Medici was stabbed before the High Altar of the 
Duomo on April 26, 1478. Lorenzo escaped at the expense of 
the life of a friend. The Florentines showed in what quarter 
their suspicions lay by imprisoning young Cardinal Raffaello, 
the great-nephew of the Pope, who was celebrating Mass at the 
time of the murder. The plot had failed, for Lorenzo lived to 
reap the results in an outflow of popular enthusiasm which was 
poured into pamphlets directed to the Pope. Sixtus put Lorenzo 
under the Ban, and Florence under the Interdict for supporting 
him. The quarrel grew wider: Louis XL tried and failed to 
arbitrate, and the city became more and more passionately loyal 
to the Medici party, and increasingly hostile to Sixtus. The 
trouble grew into war, in which Naples supported the Pope, and 



THE SECULAE PAPACY 283 

Florence gained what help she could from her uninterested 
allies. The Pazzi wars found Florence ill-prepared: the 
aggressor was really Sixtus, who was anxious to secure the 
position of Girolamo in Imola by every means he could. In 
1479 Lorenzo travelled to Naples to arrange a peace with 
Ferrante ; in 1480 he made terms with Sixtus IV. The Turks 
had occupied Otranto, and as usual Italy was reawakened to a 
moment's national consciousness by the disaster. 

Lorenzo and Sixtus had laid aside their quarrel at the news of 
the landing of the Turks in Italy. They took it up again when in 
1481 the Turks retired. But the position was not the same as 
before, for Lorenzo had founded his peace with Naples more firmly 
than with Sixtus. On the other hand, Venice had made peace 
with the Pope out of jealousy of the "unnatural" Florentine- 
Neapolitan alliance. In 1482 a fresh war broke out, which was 
famous in Italian history for its exceptionally deadly character. 
The aggression of Girolamo Riario lay at the back of it, as of all 
the political schemes of Sixtus. This tempestuous young man 
had added Forli to Imola, and showed further designs on 
Ferrara. But it was one thing to overthrow the unpopular 
House of the Ordelaffi at Forli, and quite another to oppose the 
powerful Este of Ferrara, with the support of their kinsman the 
King of Naples. Girolamo and his " dark designs " were even 
more than Italy could stand, and Federigo of Urbino refused to 
serve as papal condottiere. Roberto Malatesta took his place, 
and both the leaders fell in the great battle of Campo Morto, 
August 21, 1482. It was technically a victory for Sixtus, but it 
was barren of results. Ferrara was unconquered, and Rome was 
distracted by a blood feud which had produced an acute revival 
of Colonna-Orsini hostility. Riario was making himself person- 
ally odious wherever he went, and Venice was behaving in a 
high-handed way as the Pope's ally. It only needed ecclesias- 
tical opposition to complete the Pope's discomfiture, and this 
element was supplied by the Archbishop of Krain, a simple- 
hearted German who had been imprisoned for plain-speaking 
when, on a visit to Rome in 1479, he had been shocked at the 
moral atmosphere which he found there. He now reappeared in 
the ominous city of Basle, where he published his opinion of 
Sixtus as a son of the devil, etc., and invited the Pope's 
enemies to a Council. Krain's words and his methods were 
antiquated, but Florence and Milan showed some interest 
in him. and Sixtus was alarmed in proportion as he knew 
himself to be vulnerable. The belated conciliar movement 
came to nothing, and Krain hanged himself in a prison cell 



284 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

in 1484. But his action had a marked effect on the policy of 
Sixtus. 

The last phase of the Italian policy of Sixtus begins in 1482, 
when in December he made peace with Ferrara, and ordered 
Venice to do the same. But Venice had her own reasons for pur- 
suing the war, and refused at the point of victory to abandon it. 
Sixtus promptly faced round on his too-powerful ally, and joined 
the confederacy of her foes. Fortified by the further support of 
Louis XI. of France, who might otherwise have taken up the 
conciliar cry, the Pope excommunicated the Venetians, and 
refused to open negotiations with them until they should have 
been driven back from their mainland conquests. On his 
death-bed in the following year, Sixtus had to ratify a peace 
dictated by his allies on less exorbitant terms. He did so 
indignantly and under pressure, for a last desperate struggle 
with the Colonna had spent the flame of his wonderful energy. 
His last recorded act is one of broken faith. The Colonnesi 
had taken the part of Naples against him on the field of Campo 
Morto. They had headed the opposition to Girolamo Biario, and 
in revenge Sixtus pursued them with the fury of Nemesis. 
Castle after castle was seized, and the last two were delivered up 
by Fabrizio Colonna as the price of the life of his brother Oddo, 
then in the Pope's hands. Oddo was submitted to a mock trial 
and executed, and his mangled remains were sent to his mother 
who found in them the proof of the faith of Pope Sixtus. 

Oddo Colonna, like his fellow victims the Ordelaffi, Giuliano 
de Medici, and many others, were sacrificed to the ascendancy 
of the secular Papacy. The seal of Machiavelli's approval con- 
firms the worst deeds of Sixtus IV., for they showed how "things 
that before were called errors could be hidden behind the papal 
authority ". Since Machiavelli laid down the ethics of villainy, 
the successful criminals of the world have never been without 
an apologist. But Sixtus IV. was not really one of these : few 
crimes can be directly brought home to him, and still fewer met 
with the justification of success. His very energy was borrowed, 
and the odium which followed him was incurred by others. 

The sensual crimes of Piero Riario and the recklessness of 
Girolamo were cloaked by the official position of their uncle, 
whose complacence and connivance were his worst faults. He 
never pretended to be other than a worldling, but judged by 
contemporary standards — taking for granted, that is, the low 
moral values of his age — he still remains a failure. None of 
his plans succeeded: he had failed to overthrow Lorenzo de 
Medici, Ferrara held out against him to the last, and Venice had 



THE SECULAK PAPACY 285 

successfully braved his anger and asserted herself against him, 
first as an ally and later as a foe. Naples had coquetted with 
him and thrown him over at the bidding of Florence, while the 
Colonna had made him pay dearly for the barren privilege of 
humiliating them. 

In art, as in politics, undiscriminating energy marked the 
pontificate of Sixtus. The Sistine Chapel, which is his greatest 
monument, is not a thing of beauty in itself, but it is interesting 
as showing the beginning of Renaissance architecture in Rome. 
His artists formed themselves into the confraternity of St. Luke, 
and among them were the most brilliant names of the splendid 
period. But it has often been remarked that none of them — not 
even Ghirlandaio or Perugino or Botticelli — did themselves 
justice under the influence of the Pope. The second-rate work 
of Cosimo Roselli won the prize in the fresco competition for 
the walls of the Sistine, possibly because his pliable talent 
submitted itself more easily to the taste of his patron. 

Humanism too received impetus under Sixtus, but again of 
the uncritical, mediocre type, and Platina's name alone stands 
out among the crowd of scholars who blessed the name of the 
Pope. To the foundation of the Vatican library we owe one of 
the most interesting portraits which papal history gives. Melozzo 
da Forli's picture represents Sixtus giving the keys of the library 
to Platina, with his nephews standing round him. As a family 
portrait it is full of character, and in the features of the della 
Rovere and Riario nephews we can trace the same brutal energy 
which directed the policy of Sixtus and enabled him to leave 
so deep an impression on the character of the Papacy. 1 

The confusion on the death of Sixtus was unusually great, 
owing to the number of militant spirits in the College. Jobbery 
ran so high that the strongest candidates defeated each other, 
and finally Cardinal Cibo of Genoa was elected by the combined 
influence of Cardinal Rovere and Cardinal Borgia. Innocent 
VIII. (1484-1492) was not in any way remarkable, except for a 
certain honesty which led him to acknowledge openly a large 
family of children, two of whom played conspicuous parts in 
the history of his pontificate. But the Cibo family were not of 
the stuff of which the Rovere were made. Innocent's daughter, 
Teodorina, was married to a rich Genoese merchant, and quite 
content with her lot. The only son who made any mark was 
Franceschetto, who lived at first at the Vatican Court and was 

1 For an interesting account of this picture, see ' ' Rome and the Renais- 
sance," by Klaczko, Ch. I. 



286 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

generally known as Innocent's nephew. In addition to these, 
the Pope was credited with fourteen other children, but this is 
probably an exaggeration : he was too kind a father not to have 
made provision for thern, and they would surely have left traces 
of their existence in an age in which the Pope's nephews 
ranked as princes. 

Sixtus IV. had at least a definite policy : Innocent VIII. was 
content to drift with the tide. Trivulzio, the great soldier, gives 
an estimate of him which history cannot deny — " The Pope is 
full of greed, cowardice, and baseness like a common knave ; 
were there not men about him who inspired him with some 
spirit, he would crawl away like a rabbit, and grovel like any 
dastard " (Creighton, IV., p. 148). It was true that Innocent was 
controlled by master-minds. His first policy was dictated by 
Giuliano della Rovere, who had manipulated his election. In 
accordance with the Rovere tradition he supported the Nea- 
politan barons against Ferrante of Naples. The French claims 
on Naples had now passed to the crown, and out of fear of 
French intervention Florence and Milan sided with Ferrante. 
But the Cardinals present in Rome shared the universal fear of 
France, and at their urgency and during the absence of Giuliano 
in France, Innocent was induced to make peace in 1486. The 
appalling state of Rome had contributed to the need for peace. 
The Orsini had joined Ferrante, and Virginio Orsini was besieging 
Rome when Sanseverino relieved it, but the mercenaries on both 
sides plundered the city with indiscriminate zeal. But the 
peace was dishonourable to Innocent, who had sacrificed his 
allies, the barons and the Colonna, and it infuriated Cardinal 
Rovere who found on his return that his sun had set. 

Lorenzo de Medici dominated the second policy of Innocent. 
He bought the Pope with his daughter, Maddalena, whom he 
offered as a bride for Franceschetto. The offer was irresistible, 
and since Maddalena was the daughter of Clarice Orsini, Vir- 
ginio's sister, it meant a reversal of the Pope's earlier alliance 
with the Colonna party. Neither this consideration, nor a half- 
concluded alliance with Venice, which had to lapse, hindered 
Innocent from carrying out the Medici marriage. Virginio 
Orsini was taken into favour, and Giuliano della Rovere was 
kept at a distance. Henceforth Lorenzo controlled the Vatican 
policy, and it was fortunate for the Pope that he had fallen into 
such capable hands. In 1488 the murder of Girolamo Riario by 
his subjects in Imola was laid at the door of Innocent, and 
when the courage of Girolamo's wife, Caterina, saved the city for 
her son, Innocent was further accused of deserting the rebels 






THE SECULAK PAPACY 287 

whom he had at first encouraged. Innocent was the kind of 
person who would always be accused of breach of faith, because 
he cared nothing about consistency. But Girolamo's death was 
naturally welcomed by his life-long enemy, Lorenzo, and in the 
following year the Pope's alliance with the Medici was drawn 
closer than ever by the appointment of Lorenzo's son, Giovanni, 
to the cardinalate. 

Innocent's dealings with the King of France were as ineffec- 
tive as his Italian schemes. The Florentine alliance had inter- 
rupted his negotiations with Charles VIII. concerning Naples, 
but a curious .little intrigue had been carried out round the pic- 
turesque figure of Djem. Djem was the Sultan's brother, who 
had been captured by the Knights of St. John at Rhodes, and 
placed by them under the protection of the French Crown. He 
was a most useful person in many ways because he was both 
the rival of the reigning Sultan, Bajazet II., and a hostage for 
his good behaviour. He was also the much-desired of every 
European province, and the paying-guest of his captors. Every 
one offered bribes to the Regent of France for the privilege of en- 
tertaining Djem, but Innocent held a trump card in the offer of 
a cardinalate to the Grand Master of the Knights. At the same 
time he was prepared to withhold a dispensation from Anne of 
Brittany, who wanted to marry her cousin within the prohibited 
degrees, and so to enable the King of France to marry her, and 
add Brittany to France. It was nothing to Innocent that Anne 
and Charles were both pledged by previous contracts : he even 
showed himself complacent enough to condone the fact that the 
marriage was accomplished ten days before the Bulls arrived. 
Meanwhile, Djem had come to Rome in 1489, and the proud, 
silent Oriental, who refused the courtesies and gifts of his captors, 
formed a dignified contrast to the fussy duplicities of the Pope. 
The interviews between Innocent and Djem outraged public'' 
opinion in a way that the worst immoralities of the Cardinals 
and irregularities of the Popes failed to do. Only a generation 
ago Pius II. had appealed to the Church militant to combine 
against the infidel in a Holy War. His third successor was now 
exchanging courtesies on equal terms with a Moslem prince, who 
was at once his guest and his paymaster. 

In the year 1492, Cardinal Borgia gave a magnificent bull- 
fight in Rome to celebrate the Union of the Spanish Monarchy 
and the fall of Granada. Both these events were important for 
the future of the Papacy. The strong new kingdom of Spain 
was bound by the iron bond of the Inquisition to the Pope's 
service, and the Moors, who were expelled from Granada, swelled 



288 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

the ranks of the infidels of South Italy, and made Rome more 
pagan than ever. At about the same time young Giovanni de 
Medici came to Rome to begin his life as a Cardinal, fortified by 
Lorenzo's wise letter of advice, in which he warns him against 
the dangers of Rome asa" sink of iniquities ". Giovanni must 
have missed in Rome the cultivated society to which he was 
accustomed in Florence, but he left his own city on the eve of 
sorrow. Later on in the year Lorenzo died, and the golden age 
of Florentine civilta gave place to a period of constitutional 
upheaval. The exquisite day-dream of Platonic philosophy and 
ephemeral pleasure, in which the discussions of the Academy 
and the laughter of carnival had an equal share, passed away 
with Lorenzo de Medici, and Florence awoke to the sound of 
controversy and civic strife. Savonarola already held sway by 
his preaching, and Piero de Medici was giving proof of the in- 
capacity which was to bring his house to ruin. In the middle 
of these great events Innocent VIII. died, old and unregretted, 
except by the children for whom he had toiled. Before his 
death he had just married his grand-daughter to Ferrante's 
grandson. These marriages cost him a lot of money, and, in 
order to obtain it, he had created and sold new offices in the 
Curia. The result of this was to lower the standard of the 
officials of his court, and dishonesty and forgery were added to 
venality in the authentic charges against the Curia. The Car- 
dinals were still further corrupted, and gambling was among 
the lesser evils prevalent among them. The Vatican under 
Innocent had a domestic aspect : he began the practice of in- 
viting ladies officially to dinner, and at his country-house of La 
Magliana he lived the life of the ordinary middle-aged layman, 
surrounded by his children. He was not particularly interested 
in art or letters, but he went steadily on with the adornment of 
Rome. He placed a fountain in the piazza of St. Peter, and he 
built the Villa Belvedere in the Vatican gardens. Harmless and 
ineffective, Innocent VIII. had merely confirmed the secular 
character of the Papacy, and by his open acknowledgment of 
family ties made further developments possible. 

The Conclave which met in 1492 to elect Innocent's successor 
was an exceptionally brilliant assembly, but there were three 
men who stood out beyond the others, each of them masters in 
statecraft, and each gifted with marked personality. These 
were Giuliano della Rovere, Ascanio Sforza, and Rodrigo Borgia. 
Giuliano was the candidate of France, Ascanio of his own brother, 
the Duke of Milan, and Rodrigo owed his strength to the riches 
which he had accumulated as Vice-Chancellor. Seeing that 



THE SECULAK PAPACY 289 

France and Milan could be played off against each other, Rod- 
rigo Borgia set to work to buy up the Papacy by a judicious 
distribution of his palaces, his offices, and his goods. To the 
Colonna Cardinal he gave the Abbey of Subiaco, to his Orsini 
rival a Roman palace, and two villas ; for the rest of the Cardi- 
nals there were gifts in due gradation, while Ascanio Sforza's 
support was won by a promise of the post of Vice-Chancellor, 
supplemented by four mules laden with gold and silver. Thus 
Rodrigo became Alexander VI. (1492-1503), and the transaction 
is characteristic of the man. To attempt an apology for Alex- 
ander's pontificate is now unnecessary and impossible — un- 
necessary, because the case for and against him has been 
probed to the foundations, and impossible, because the principle 
on which any possible justification rests is in itself unjustifiable. 
The question is whether in an age of fraud and immorality he 
was more or less fraudulent and immoral than other conspicuous 
examples of these tendencies. But the answer does not dispose 
of the charge, even if we admit that there were worse men than 
he among the rulers of Italy, for the accusation against him is 
not personal, but official. It is not that he degraded himself, 
but that he degraded the Papacy. Whether the Borgian Papacy 
was an outrage on the age or a characteristic example of Renais- 
sance State-life — whether we regard it as a catastrophe or as 
the culmination of a decline — the calamity lies in the travesty, 
which it presents, of the ideal which had given the Papacy its 
magnificent claim on the mind of Europe. 

There was no skeleton in the Borgian cupboard in 1492. It 
was so well-known what kind of a man Rodrigo was that Bishop 
Creighton is able to contend that " the exceptional infamy that 
attaches to Alexander VI. is largely due to the fact that he did 
not add hypocrisy to his other vices ". There was certainly no 
reticence among his contemporaries as to his way of life, neither 
was there at first much condemnation. His simony provoked 
scandals, but not his sensual vices. His family was taken for 
granted and his children were treated with deference. He is 
described by a contemporary at the time of his coronation as " a 
handsome man with a pleasant look and a honeyed tongue, who 
lures women to love him, and attracts those on whom he casts 
his eyes more powerfully than a magnet draws iron " (Gas- 
parino of Verona). Pius II. had reproved him in his youth for 
taking part in an orgy in a Sienese garden at which a young 
Cardinal was certainly out of place, and " shame forbids mention 
of all that occurred ". Since then he had watched the moral 
ideal of the Papacy decline through four pontificates, and life 

19 



290 A SHORT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

had not taught him moral restraint. He had two illegitimate 
children before the year 1473, when he began his connection 
with Vanozza de Catarei, a " quiet and upright woman," who 
bore him three sons and a daughter. The Vanozza liaison had 
ended some time before Alexander's election, but her children 
were conspicuous at the Vatican for their beauty and their 
princely education. The eldest, Giovanni, had succeeded his 
half-brother in the duchy of Gandia, which Rodrigo had bought 
for his Spanish son, who died in 1488. Cesare was being edu- 
cated as a priest and already held many benefices which Sixtus 
IV. had bestowed on him in his infancy. Lucrezia was already 
beautiful, with her quick smile and her famous golden hair, 
and Giuffre, the youngest, was as yet a child in 1492. Rodrigo 
was nothing if not a devoted father, and he had provided honour- 
ably for " la felice e infelice madre, Vanozza Borgia," as she 
describes herself in a letter to Lucrezia. Rodrigo's children are 
individually important for the great part which they played in 
his policy and collectively as the motive force which actuated 
everything which he did. Their aggrandisement was his sole 
aim, and in his passionate fatherhood lies the reason why, 
according to Gregorius, " his entire pontificate shows not a 
single great idea, either in Church or State, either as priest or 
as prince ". 

Alexander first had to pay his debts. The chief quarrel 
among the Italian princes, on his accession, was between Milan 
and Naples. Milan was represented in Rome by Ascanio Sforza, 
brother of Ludovico il Moro, and to Ascanio, Alexander owed 
his election. Alexander had his own quarrel with Naples too, 
for Ferrante had pressed forward the sale to the Orsini of 
certain territories belonging to Franceschetto Cibo, in the hope 
that they would be " a bone in the throat of the Pope with 
which the Orsini might strangle him at their desire ". Venice, 
Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, and Siena joined Alexander's anti- 
Neapolitan alliance. Spain, too, adhered to it, for Alexander 
had just confirmed Ferdinand's sovereignty in the New World. 
The bonds were drawn closer with Milan by the marriage of 
Lucrezia Borgia with Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro, and 
twelve new Cardinals were created in order to defray the ex- 
penses of her wedding. Among them were Cesare Borgia, now 
aged eighteen, and Alessandro Farnese, brother of Giulia, who 
was recognised as Alexander's mistress at the time of Lucrezia's 
wedding. The beauty of Giulia, with the hair " which reached 
to her feet and shone like the sun," was perpetuated in one of 
Pinturicchio's Madonnas, by order of the Pope. 



THE SECULAB PAPACY 291 

Alexander's first Italian policy gave way in 1494, before the 
announcement of Charles VIII. 's invasion of Italy for the con- 
quest of Naples. The astounding success of the French army 
terrified Alexander ; his worst enemy, Cardinal della Rovere, 
was in Charles's camp ; the vacillation of Piero de Medici had 
given Florence to Charles for an ally, and the French King had 
once or twice mentioned the word Council. Alexander there- 
fore turned from Milan to Naples, and married his son GiufTre 
with some difficulty to Sancia, daughter of Alfonso II., now 
King of Naples. He dared not openly oppose France, so, ignor- 
ing Naples, he pretended to look on the expedition as a Crusade 
against the Turk. At the same time he disgraced himself by 
appealing to the Sultan to subsidise the papal army against 
France, on the plea that Charles if he succeeded would capture 
Djem, and invade Constantinople in his name. Bajazet sent 
40,000 ducats for use against the " crusading " forces of France. 
It is now known that he sent another embassy at the same time 
promising a further 30,000 in return for the dead body of Djem, 
" wherewith your Highness may buy lands for your sons ". 

Meanwhile, the French party among the Cardinals urged 
Charles to break with the Pope and summon a General Council. 
But this line of action did not appeal to the King, who realised 
that " Alexander might be unfit to be Pope, but that he (Charles) 
was equally unfit to say so " (Creighton). Alexander answered 
the attack of the hostile Cardinals on his character with logic 
which was irrefutable : " Let slanderers tell what tales they 
will, Alexander is holier, or at least as holy, as he was at the 
time of his election ". This was true enough, but meanwhile 
Charles had advanced to Rome without opposition, although 
Alexander had refused to give him safe-conduct through the 
papal states. Charles finally entered Rome under the shelter 
of an emergency peace and encamped on the farther side of the 
Tiber. When he left the city, on January 25, he took with him 
as hostages, Cesare Borgia and Djem. Charles was unlucky 
in his hostages. Cesare escaped five days later from the 
French camp, and thus proved the extent of Alexander's good 
faith. The forlorn Oriental ended his tragic life a month later, 
and strangely enough by a natural death, although the theory 
that the Pope had poisoned him before he left Rome was pro- 
duced as a matter of course, and believed by those who wished 
to believe it. 

The " miraculous " success of the French culminated in the 
conquest of Naples, and Savonarola saw in it the fulfilment of 
his vision of Charles, " Missus a Deo ". But behind him, Charles 



292 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

left a trail of suspicion and dread, which found expression in 
Alexander's league for the expulsion of the French in March, 
1495. The Pope had every reason for opposing Charles, who had 
listened to the truth about his own character, who had allied 
himself with unfriendly Florence, and who now threatened him 
with that bugbear of the Papacy, a strong and united Naples, 
hostile to Rome. His feelings were shared by Ludovico Sforza, 
now alarmed at the fire which he had lighted, and painfully 
conscious of the claims of Louis of Orleans on his duchy of 
Milan. The terror of the lilies spread to Venice, prompted by 
fear for her maritime greatness — to Spain, apprehensive for 
Spanish Sicily — to Maximilian, jealous as one " preux cheva- 
lier" of the military glory of another. In July, the battle of 
Fornovo saw the end of the vainglorious Charles and his de- 
moralised army. His successes had awakened Italy from her 
aesthetic slumber, and the honour, such as it is, of resisting the 
" scourge" is due to Alexander. 

But the attempt to find anything deeper than a coincidence 
of personal motives for the combination of the Italian states 
against France fails when we consider that Florence, the most 
enlightened of them all, held aloof from it. A national ideal, 
if Italy had been capable of formulating one, would have found 
its best chance of acceptance in Florence. But the Florentines 
clung obstinately to their alliance with France, in spite of all 
Alexander's efforts to detach them. The benefits which Charles 
had promised them — the exclusion of the Medici and the reduc- 
tion of Pisa — seemed of greater importance than the privilege of 
being " Buoni Italian! ". Savonarola, one-sided politician as he 
was, felt that Florentine liberty was a bigger cause than the 
exclusion from Italy of the avenging foreigner. Italy, in his 
eyes, was not worth saving until the " scourge " had fallen upon 
it. Alexander's opposition to the " chattering friar " was there- 
fore reasonable and deliberate. He was indeed surprisingly 
patient with him in the early part of the quarrel, and bore him 
no grudge for his invectives against him as a "broken iron". 
He was determined to keep the quarrel on a political footing — 
a hard thing with an enemy so fearless and deadly in his use of 
personal weapons. In 1496, he suspended him from preaching, 
and when this failed he bribed him with a red hat. At the 
same time, he encouraged the hostility of the Roman Domini- 
cans, and later of the Franciscans, against the friar. When, 
in 1497, a party hostile to Savonarola arose in Florence, Alex- 
ander took the opportunity of excommunicating him, but the 
"Burning of the Vanities" on Lent testified to the continued 



THE SECULAE PAPACY 293 

strength of his opponent's hold on the city. All the time the 
Pope was concentrating on the one object of dissociating Flor- 
ence from France, and when finally the execution of Savonarola 
became a political necessity, Alexander reluctantly gave his 
consent. He was not responsible for his death, which was due 
to the rhetorical challenge of one of the friar's friends, but he 
had consented to it, and his opposition to Savonarola's politics 
had brought it about. But it was one of the things which this 
strange Pope always regretted, although it had brought him an 
immediate political advantage, and in spite of the fact that it 
delivered him from a personal enemy who might have become 
dangerous if the French menace of a Council had been put into 
effect. 

The interest of Alexander in resisting France was not in any 
sense national, for it was reversed by the death of the Duke of 
Gandia in 1497. On June 14 the body of the Pope's eldest 
son was thrown into the Tiber by two masked men, directed by 
another on horseback. A charcoal burner who witnessed it, 
when he was asked why he did not report it at once, replied 
that he had seen a hundred or more bodies thrown into the river 
in his day, but never one that had been asked for again. The 
circumstances of the Duke of Gandia's death were so mysterious 
that the guilt cannot be assigned with certainty to anyone. But 
its political importance was enormous, for it set at large the 
sinister efficiency and ambition of the Pope's younger son, 
Cesare Borgia. Alexander had loved Giovanni, but he feared 
Cesare and was dominated by him, to the extent perhaps of 
condoning his fratricide. At anyrate his grief for Giovanni 
spent itself in six months, during which he talked of reform, 
and kept Cesare at a distance. At the time of Giovanni's death, 
he said to the Cardinals — "We no longer value the Papacy or 
anything else. If we had seven papacies we would give them 
all to restore him to life." A year later, we find him embarked 
in fresh schemes for his children, this time concentrated on the 
"dark designs " of Cesare. 

At this period the family chronicle of the Borgias moves 
rapidly, and scandal rampages round the events. Lucrezia's 
divorce from Giovanni Sforza was a necessary first step in the 
change of policy which was to substitute France for Milan as the 
family ally. Lucrezia was too exquisite a prize to be thrown 
away on the policy of a moment. Moreover, it was possible to 
annul the marriage and set Lucrezia free at the expense of 
Giovanni's pride. Giovanni could, and did, retaliate by an 
appalling, but at that time obvious, counterstroke against 






294 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Lucrezia's father, but the Italians of his day preferred to laugh 
than to condemn, and the joke against Giovanni pleased those 
who would hesitate to believe "so great an enormity" of the 
Pope. But " whatever may be the truth," wrote the Venetian 
envoy in relating the scandal, "one thing is certain: this Pope 
behaves in an outrageous and intolerable way ". Six months 
later, Lucrezia was married to Alfonso of Biseglia, "the hand- 
somest youth ever seen in Rome ". He was the natural son of 
Alfonso II. of Naples, and his hand brought the alliance of 
Federigo, the last and most reputable of the House of Aragon, 
who had restored his dynasty after the withdrawal of the French 
from Naples. 

In August, 1498, Cesare Borgia was dispensed from the 
cardinalate "for the salvation of his soul". In December he 
went to France, a magnificent layman, to buy the alliance of 
Louis XII. in order to conquer the Romagna with the help of 
French troops. With him he carried a dispensation from his 
father to enable Louis to marry the desirable Anne of Brittany 
and to divorce his present wife Jeanne of France. Louis XII., 
in return, gave to Cesare a French dukedom and a royal bride. 
" Le voila due de Valentinois," say the French historian, Miche- 
let, " avec une compagnie de cents lances Frangaises, e'est-a-dire 
le drapeau de la France, la terreur de nos lys, affiche's a cdte* des 
clefs pontificales. C'etait le livrer l'ltalie." In May, 1499, 
Cesare married the beautiful Charlotte d'Albret, who lived with 
him for four months, loved him for ever, and never saw him 
again. Cesare, the most striking of the Borgias, is described as 
a very handsome young man, florid perhaps and vulgar, but 
"a gallant youth," according to Castiglione. Capello tells us 
that he had a splendid head, with long-shaped narrow eyes, 
from which a hard and serpentine glance seemed to shoot fire. 
His relations with his father were curious. Widely different in 
temperament, they shared only the thoroughness of Borgian self- 
seeking. Both Alexander and Cesare " did but will a thing and it 
was done " : both owed their successes to their clear knowledge 
of what they wanted, and their failures to the short cuts which 
they were obliged to take in getting there. A chronicler records 
the irritation of Cesare at the incurable outspokenness of his 
father, and in Florence a proverb was coined that " II Papa non 
facera mai quello che dicera, e il Valentino non dicera mai 
quello che facera ". Alexander was the child of the day, Cesare 
of the night, and with the ascendancy of the son over the father, 
from the year 1499, darkness lowers over the picture of Rome, 
and revelry gives place to terror. 



THE SECULAE PAPACY 295 

Cesare's first exploit with his French army in Romagna was 
the capture of Imola and Forli from Caterina Sforza in January, 
1500. Tne Pope's relations with Naples had been disturbed by 
the French alliance, but this did not cloud his joy when he re- 
ceived his triumphant son in Rome in the year of Jubilee. He 
laughed and cried at once, he led Cesare in procession with the 
captive Caterina in golden chains, he watched his hero kill six 
bulls in the Piazza, and diverted him with gorgeous spectacles 
and fabulous indecencies. The news of the capture of the 
Sforzas by the French increased the joy of the Borgias, for it 
opened new vistas of conquest for Cesare. Either as a stepping- 
stone for further exploits in which Lucrezia could be a useful 
decoy, or in gratification of a private vendetta, Cesare found it 
necessary to murder his young brother-in-law before he left 
Rome. Alexander hushed the affair up as far as he could, but 
Lucrezia had loved Alfonso and loudly lamented him. She was 
sent away to dry her tears or to drown them in new splendours, 
for a third and greater destiny awaited her. In 1500 the Kings 
of France and Spain formed a partition treaty for the division 
of Naples. Alexander went to Naples to confirm the treaty, and 
in his absence left Lucrezia as his regent, with a Council of 
Cardinals, in the Vatican. It was a clever stroke, for, in spite 
of the scandal involved, it gave Lucrezia a certain personal im- 
portance in affairs which successfully overcame the pride of the 
House of Este. In 1501 Lucrezia married Alfonso d'Este, and 
her political importance ends at the age of twenty-two in her 
happy life at the ducal Court of Ferrara. The character of 
Lucrezia Borgia has emerged from four centuries of execration. 
In spite of the brilliant and lurid setting of her youth, she was 
probably merely a tool of Alexander and Cesare — a beautiful 
girl with the Borgian love of life and a taste for literature and 
art. She was not interested in the Borgian schemes, in which 
she played a passive part, and for politics she had no particular 
capacity or ambition. She took her morals from her environ- 
ment : her married life at Ferrara was above reproach, and her 
children were admirably brought up. Before she left Rome two 
children were provided for by Alexander, one Rodrigo, an ille- 
gitimate son of Lucrezia, and the other the mysterious " infans 
Romanus,'' who is mentioned in one document as the son of 
Cesare and in another as the son of the Pope. Here was more 
material for scandal, and the utmost was made of it. Cesare 
was busy waging war in the Romagna ; Rimini and Pesaro had 
been wrested from their lords : Faenza held out for six months 
in the name of its boy ruler, Astorre Manfredi ; but his body was 



296 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

found one day in the Tiber. Cesare was Duke of Romagna, and 
a series of picturesque crimes had made him the hero- villain of 
Italy. As Lucrezia passed through the Romagna on her wedding 
journey she found it necessary, in passing through many cities, 
to wash her hair as an excuse for retirement. But the rule of 
Cesare Borgia was popular on the whole, and Machiavelli's ad- 
miration for him has considerable justification on that account. 
In Rome meanwhile the fear of the Borgias grew, and the 
death of the richest of the Cardinals excited further sinister 
suspicions. Poisonings were not as frequent under the Borgias 
as contemporaries are anxious to make us believe, but since in 
one case, that of Cardinal Michiel, the guilt of Alexander can be 
all but proved, it is not unreasonable to suspect him of repeat- 
ing the profitable expedient. Two further stains on Cesare's 
political reputation — the assassination of Giovanni da Fermo by 
his nephew in the name of Cesare, and a treacherous attack on 
Urbino — deepened the universal panic. " The dead of night 
covered all things," and the fatal luck of the Borgias never 
seemed to fail. 

But the end was not far off. The arrival of Louis XII. in 
Italy in 1502 was the signal which drew the enemies of Cesare 
together. He had grown suspicious of his captains, who com- 
plained of him to the French King. The duke had been alto- 
gether too active and successful in Romagna to please his former 
patron, and Louis was irritated by his attitude towards Florence. 
The presence of the French, therefore, put heart into the dis- 
contented condottieri and rallied the dispossessed lords of 
Romagna. Cesare's coup d'etat at Sinigaglia was the last of his 
great crimes. He lured the four chief condottieri to his camp, 
professing to have pardoned their temporary lapse from allegi- 
ance. Oliverotto and Vitellozzo were strangled on the spot, after 
dinner ; the two Orsini a few days later. Alexander meanwhile 
seized Cardinal Orsini, who died conveniently in prison, and laid 
hold of the family castles. Meanwhile, the partition treaty of 
Naples had broken down, and, to the intense relief of Alexander, 
the French were expelled from Naples. " If the Lord had not 
put discord between France and Spain, where should we be ? " 
was the remark of the Pope, who had seen himself between two 
fires. A network of new intrigues with France, with Maximilian, 
with Spain, and with Venice was spread across Europe for the 
further aggrandisement of the insatiable Cesare, when the ac- 
cident of death brought the Borgian fortunes to a collapse. One 
night in August, 1503, Alexander and Cesare were both taken ill 
after dining with Cardinal Adrian in the Borgo Nuovo. They 



THE SECULAR PAPACY 297 

were all three struck with fever, and on August 18 the Pope 
died. Of course people said that he was poisoned with a potion 
which he had prepared for Cardinal Adrian, but the medical 
evidence disposes of the suspicion. Alexander had lived too 
abnormally to be accredited with an ordinary death, and yet it 
is impossible to feel that he really rises to the height of villainy 
at which posterity has placed him. He was too exuberant and 
ingenuous to live up to the Machiavellian ideal which was ful- 
filled in his son. He liked to be pleasantly unpleasant, and he 
trod lightly the path of treachery and evil. But if we exonerate 
him from the deepest guilt he must also forfeit the admiration 
which we cannot withhold from daring criminality. The modern 
estimate of Alexander paints him less black than formerly, but 
it ranks him lower in the scale of sinners. His crimes of sensu- 
ality lack the dignity of mental wickedness ; there is no glamour 
in indecency, and his Vatican orgies lack the inspired touch of 
splendid sin. 

Alexander's rule in Rome deteriorated as his pontificate 
wore on. " Never was Rome so full of criminals," says Cardinal 
iEgidius ; " never was the multitude of informers and robbers 
so audacious. People could neither leave the gates of the city, 
nor dwell within it. To own money or valuable property was 
equal to high treason. There was no protection either in house, 
sleeping-room, or tower. Justice was effaced. Money, power, 
and lust governed everything." And yet the author of all the 
trouble was Alexander of the "joyous nature". He was 
assiduous in his adoration of the Virgin, regular in his devotions, 
interested in sending missionaries to America, and the origina- 
tor, it is said, of the Angelus, that most poetic of Catholic 
practices. It was the extreme paradox of an age of contra- 
dictions, in which religion had grown apart from life, and the 
Church was one with the world. 

All that the Borgias had built up in the ten years of 
Alexander's pontificate fell to pieces on his death. Cesare was 
ill and could not rally his forces. Pius III., the best candidate 
he could secure to the Papacy, lived only twenty-six days, and 
was succeeded by Giuliano della Rovere, Cesare's bitterest 
opponent. Julius II. (1503-1513) tried to keep on friendly terms 
with him, but he was determined to destroy his power in the 
Romagna. There was not room for two such men in Italy, and 
Cesare was imprisoned when he refused to give up his castles. 
On his release he was used as a condottiere, but soon imprisoned 
again. In Spain he escaped from a third captivity, and died 
bravely in battle on March 12, 1507. The value of Cesare 



298 A SHOKT HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY 

Borgia's career in history was that he denned and accentuated 
the tendencies of the age. Machiavelli used him as a foundation 
on which to build his ideal state, in which success is substituted 
for ethics. The mediaeval Papacy was the great symbol of the 
oneness of religion and power. In theory it stood for the spirit 
of world-wide love as opposed to the instinct of national hate. 
In becoming a secular kingdom the Papacy lost its symbolical 
significance, and in the story of the Borgias we see the result. 



CHAPTER XXV 

JULIUS n. AND LEO X. : THE PAPACY AMONG THE 
DYNASTIES, a.d. 1503-1521 

JULIUS II. came to the throne with a fixed aim, and a mind 
in tune with it. He could therefore afford to "be the 
slave of every one " provided that he could achieve his end. 
In this spirit he made the alliance with France in 1504 against 
Venice. He must be lord of the Romagna at all costs. With 
Cesare Borgia out of the way, Venice was his chief danger. 
Louis XII., less clear-sighted, did not forsee that in helping to 
restore the Romagna to the Papacy he was creating the power 
which should destroy the schemes of France in Italy. The 
Pope's first negotiations against Venice ended in a clever peace, 
which enabled Julius to keep what he had won, and left the 
future conveniently insecure for his foes. The triumph was all 
the greater considering that France had already withdrawn her 
support, and absorbed herself in other diplomatic interests. 

Julius had too much to do to allow the peace of Italy to 
endure, and the next step in the making of his kingdom was an 
attack on the papal vicars of Perugia and Bologna. The two 
cities had long ago forgotten their ecclesiastical allegiance, and 
the ruling families regarded themselves as independent lords. 
The Baglioni of Perugia were tyrannical and unpopular; the 
Bentivogli of Bologna were autocratic but beloved. Both cities 
fell before the sudden attack of the Pope. Perugia was held 
without much difficulty, but Bologna was a perpetual trouble. 
For the moment, however, Julius had made himself feared, and 
with an eye still towards Venice, he took up the threads of 
diplomacy, and began to weave the ruin of the great sea power. 

The league of Cambria in 1508 was the result of the accumu- 
lated selfishness of the states of Europe, skilfully manipulated 
by the craft of Julius II. It was signed by representatives of 
France and of the Empire, but it included in its schedule of 
benefits the interests of the Pope, the King of Aragon, Hungary, 
Savoy, Ferrara and Mantua. Venice was called upon to meet 
the combined attack of all her enemies and rivals. At the 

299 



300 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

battle of Vaila she was defeated, and the humiliating terms 
imposed on her were devised to ruin her trade for ever. Julius 
followed up the victory of the league by an outrageous course of 
ecclesiastical bullying. He refused to remove the Interdict 
until a quarrel with Louis XII. and dissatisfaction with 
Maximilian forced him to do so, and then only on terms of 
uttermost submission. The peace, which was not signed until 
February, 1510, gave very little satisfaction to either side: it 
was frankly a concession on both sides to necessity. Julius 
followed up the envoys' act of submission with apologetic 
remarks. The Doge left on record a formal protest against the 
terms, disavowing their binding character on the ground that he 
had acted "through violence and fear". 

The Pope described the document as a " dagger in the heart 
of the French King". It marks the end of the preliminary 
period and the beginning of the serious business of his reign. 
The territories which he had regained from Venice, added to 
those previously taken from Cesare and from the papal vicars, 
already formed the kernel of the strong middle kingdom which 
was to prevent for ever the formation of a French kingdom in 
Italy uniting Milan and Naples in one coherent whole. Un- 
fortunately for Julius, the "dagger" miscarried. He was not 
well served by his generals, or rather, he trusted in his own 
amazing energy to supply the defects of his commanders. He 
became a warrior, grew a soldier's beard, and cultivated the 
language of the camp. The fashionable military oaths of his 
day had always come to him readily, and the transformation 
was successful enough. The campaign against Ferrara opened 
hostilities with France. There were ecclesiastical claims on the 
province which afforded a pretext, the real cause being the close 
alliance of its Duke with the King of France, which made it an 
act of open hostility against Louis XII. A further cause lay in 
Duke Alfonso's salt mines, which had unwisely competed with 
the papal mines at Cerria. The savage bull against Alfonso was 
the measure of the Pope's martial vigour. Julius owed every- 
thing to his impetuosity and nothing to his discretion. He had 
counted on the Swiss, but they had failed him at every point. 
His able Swiss agent, Cardinal Schinner, could not restrain them 
from accepting French bribes. Without their co-operation the 
Venetian fleet could not succeed in the attack which had been 
planned on Genoa. A fatal habit of using bad generals was 
still more disastrous to the fortunes of Julius. The Marquis of 
Mantua and the beloved Cardinal Alidosi were both suspected 
traitors : at Bologna, where Julius fixed his head-quarters, these 



JULIUS II. AND LEO X. 301 

generals were said to be in communication with the French 
commander Chaumont. Only the vacillation of the French 
King saved the papal forces from utter disaster. Louis XII. 
allowed the moment for a vigorous counter-offensive to pass by. 
The Pope's rashness seemed to imply a reserve of power, and 
the French King failed to appreciate that willingness to take 
"off-chances" which is so characteristic of Julius. The sudden 
arrival of Spanish and Venetian reinforcements for Julius saved 
him from capitulation, but the defections of his generals made 
a direct attack on Ferrara impossible. Accordingly, in the 
middle of winter, January, 1511, he took the field himself and 
laid siege to Mirandola, the strongly fortified outpost of Ferrara, 
which was held by the Amazon-daughter of Trivulzio, the 
French general. Julius submerged his ecclesiastical personality 
in the life of the camp. He put heart into the soldiers and 
became the " bon camarade " of the Venetian generals. He 
threatened the beleaguered town with awful penalties. When at 
last its brave defence was broken down, he entered it through a 
hole in the wall, and received the submission of the splendid 
duchess as one great soldier from another. He was a merciful 
conqueror, and he sent the dispossessed duchess away with an 
honourable escort, establishing in her place her nephew, who was 
among his own supporters. 

Successful as he had been, it was obviously impossible for 
Julius to remain at the head of his forces in person, and he had 
neither money, men, nor generals to carry on the campaign. 
But peace was equally impossible on the terms proposed by the 
Bishop of Gurk, the Imperial Minister, in the name of France 
and Maximilian. In the renewal of war which followed, Miran- 
dola was recaptured by the father of the duchess. The Benti- 
vogli were restored to Bologna with the utmost ease — the town 
had never submitted with grace to the Pope's rule, and the papal 
governor, Alidosi, had been both disloyal to his master and un- 
popular with the citizens. The murder of Alidosi by the Pope's 
nephew swamped the political misfortunes of Julius in private 
grief. Julius had loved Alidosi, knowing him to be untrue ; he 
vowed vengeance on the Duke of Urbino, who may have vainly 
hoped to play the part of Cesare in his uncle's court. Three 
days later, Julius received him back into favour, and owned 
that Alidosi was worthless, and his death a good riddance. 
Such revulsions of feeling seem to have been characteristic of 
him, as the familiar story of his relations with Michelangelo 
bears out. 

The psychical moment had arrived for the outbreak of 



302 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

ecclesiastical opposition. Stifled by the noise of battle, the rumble 
of the reform movement had not been silent during the earlier 
years of the pontificate, and it now broke out under Cardinal 
Carrajal in the clamour for a council. The Council of Pisa 
which now opened had little chance of attracting much atten- 
tion in a Europe so entirely absorbed in dynastic moves and 
counter-moves. No age was less interested in religion than that 
which preceded the Reformation. The older reform movements 
had become discredited, and the classical Renaissance had won 
over its natural leaders, and by its indifference rather than its 
opposition to religion, culture had replaced dogma as the focus 
of intellectual interest. If the Council of Pisa was still-born, 
so was the outbreak of Roman democracy under Pompeo Colonna, 
which occurred in the summer of 1511, during a serious illness 
from which Julius II. unexpectedly recovered. The strong will 
of Julius could override obstacles which a more sensitive mind 
might have combated with less success. He simply had no time 
to attend to them, and consequently he made them seem unim- 
portant. For since he had left Bologna Julius had not paused 
in his designs on France. He was at work consolidating the 
opposition which crystallised in July, 1511, into the Holy League. 
Arrayed against France with the Pope were Spain, Venice, Eng- 
land, and the Empire. Louis on his side had the ecclesiastical 
opposition, but Henry VIII. had brought discredit on this party 
by ascribing its activities to the personal animosity of the rebel 
Cardinals. 

The French successes against Bologna, which had followed 
the Pope's victories, were largely due to the inactivity of the 
Spanish forces, who were under orders to do as little as possible. 
The battle of Ravenna in April, 1512, was a decisive victory for 
France, but the death of the three brilliant French generals 
rendered it abortive. Venice and Maximilian combined with 
the Swiss to drive out the French, and by August, 1532, the 
question of the disposal of Milan was brought before the Con- 
gress of Mantua. Each member of the League had its own views 
for the Lombard duchy, with the result that the weakest claim- 
ant was the most successful. The influence of the Swiss was 
responsible for the award of the duchy to Massimiliano Sforza, 
a weak prince, who was likely to be an inoffensive neighbour. 
He was also the candidate of the Pope, who preferred him to 
the other nominee, Charles, grandson of Maximilian and of 
Ferdinand, whose future importance was not likely to recommend 
him in the eyes of Julius. 

Julius had succeeded in ridding himself of French interven- 



JULIUS n. AND LEO X. 303 

tion, but he had still to reckon with the Spaniards before he 
could feel secure in his predominance in Italy. He could not, 
however, quarrel with Spain until Florence had been shaken in 
the neutrality to which she clung with such irritating tenacity. 
The last round of the contest consisted, therefore, in an invasion 
of Tuscany by the Spaniards, headed by the two Medici, the 
overthrow of the Florentine constitution, and the restoration of 
Medici rule. Julius II. failed to recognise that he had fallen 
out of the frying-pan into the fire. Florence, neutral and even 
friendly to France, was less dangerous than Florence allied to 
Spain. 

The one good friend which the League had brought to Julius 
was Maximilian, but the picturesque Emperor was disqualified 
by his temperament from usefulness as an ally. Both Maxi- 
milian and Ferdinand opposed the Italian policy of Julius : the 
Emperor had his own claims on Ferrara, which the Pope disre- 
garded. Ferdinand was afraid of the growing power of Julius, 
and declared that " no power in Italy should help him to take 
Ferrara, and make of the Duke of Urbino a second Cesare Borgia ". 
On the last point he misjudged the Pope ; Julius had not the 
desire, nor his nephew the ability, to reproduce the relationship 
between Alexander VI. and his son. Julius used his nephew as 
a convenient instrument with which to carry out his schemes 
for the Papacy, and there was little trace of personal feeling in 
the relationship between the two. The nepotism of Julius 
sprang from his politics, and not from his passions. His con- 
temporaries, appreciating the impersonal ends for which he 
worked, and contrasting them with the baseness of Alexander's 
ambitions, thought the policy of Julius more noble than it 
really wa6. His achievement was slight, for he died before he 
had made it good, and his triumphs melted away before he had 
consolidated them. His death, in February, 1513, made a deep 
impression in Rome, which was shown by the unusual restraint 
of the mob. The sudden cessation of his marvellous energy 
stunned the men round him, and it seemed as if the world had 
stopped with him. What he had actually done for the Papacy 
was to give it a place among the dynasties, and save it through 
the stormy years to come by reviving its political importance. 

Of Julius, as of so many of his great contemporaries, it is 
true to say that the world owes more to the expression of his 
ideals in art than to the ideals themselves, so imperfectly carried 
out in his career. As the patron of Bramante and Michelangelo 
he could pour forth his splendid energy in the adornment of 
Rome, ano! leave a monument to himself greater and more 



304 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

enduring than his conquests. He had struggled to make the 
Papacy felt in Europe, but his schemes fell to pieces with his 
death, while his mightiness lives on in the masterpieces which 
it undoubtedly inspired. 

In the conclave which met to appoint Julius' successor, the 
usual strife of parties was overruled by the general longing for 
rest and ease. The older Cardinals wanted a venerable man of 
peace, while the younger ones looked for a young and magnifi- 
cent person, free from martial ambition, and unlikely to trouble 
the college with strenuous political activities. In the election 
of Giovanni de' Medici at the age of thirty-eight, the counsel of 
the younger men prevailed. Young, tolerant, and splendid, Leo 
X. expressed in his personality the fulfilment of Renaissance 
aspiration. He had had a long training in the particular kind 
of knowledge of the world which made a successful ecclesiastical 
prince. He had natural qualities of mind and temperament 
which ensured the sympathy of his contemporaries. He further 
inherited the Medici tradition of cultured magnificence, which 
impressed the world around him and created an atmosphere of 
easy well-being which delighted his fellow- Cardinals with its 
promise of a future of golden leisure. The " wise " son of 
Lorenzo the Magnificent was a many-sided person, and the court 
which surrounded him as Pope was brilliant and heterogeneous. 
He combined a scholar's passion for antiquity with the genial- 
ity and love of life which made him an excellent boon companion. 
It would be difficult to say which he loved best, a day's hunting 
or a learned discussion. He seemed to be equally capable of 
appreciating the coarse buffooneries of Fra Mariano and the 
delicate beauty of Raphael's inspiration. The religious nature 
of his office hardly seems to have dawned on the " Athenian " 
Pope. His attitude towards Christianity, like that of the men 
about him, was chiefly negative : Christ seemed so much less 
important than Plato, and the Gospel narrative supplemented 
the legends of Greece as a quarry for the material of artistry. 
We have to look, for the importance of Leo's pontificate, at the 
personal aspect rather than the political forces at work. It is 
in the character of his court, the effect of his aesthetic and his 
social influence, above all, in his family projects, that Leo X. 
leaves his mark on papal history. His political ambitions, as 
compared with those of Julius, were subordinate ; they were 
most successful when they were least explicit. He was better 
at juggling with other men's schemes than at constructing 
policies of his own. The advancement of the Medici was the 
one constant factor in his diplomacy, and for this he was pre- 



JULIUS II. AND LEO X. 305 

pared to forego the larger game which Julius had played among 
the powers and to play off the invaders of Italy against each 
other so that Florence should share the spoils of the stronger or 
receive the bribes of the weaker combatant. 

It soon became clear that the Papacy was to be run on 
Medicean principles. " Let us enjoy the Papacy, since God has 
given it to us," are the words which Leo is reported to have said 
to his brother Giuliano, soon after his election. At his corona- 
tion, in April, 1513, splendour, adulation, and culture were 
combined to announce that the glories of Florence had come to 
crown the magnificence of Rome. A triumphal arch bore the 
inscription : " Once Venus reigned, then Mars, now comes the 
reign of Pallas ". " I, Venus, will always reign," was the im- 
proved version placed by a goldsmith on a statue of Venus in 
the next street. But the reign of Pallas was at first particularly 
obvious. Leo was called upon at once to face the political 
situation, and he did so resolutely in the interests of peace. 
He joined the renewed Holy League against France, because 
France at that moment was planning an invasion of North Italy. 
But when, after her defeat at the battle of Novara, France 
ceased to be the aggressor, Leo showed plainly that he had no 
desire to crush her, since she could be useful to him as a foil to 
Spain. Before Julius died, he had opened the Lateran Council 
in response to the feeling which had produced the rebel Council 
of Lyons. The sixth session of the Council was in full swing in 
the first months of Leo's reign, and he made use of it now as a 
means of reconciliation with France. The opposition Council 
of Lyons was prepared to give in, and the Cardinals Carrajal 
and Sanseverno who had supported it were as ready to submit 
to their old comrade as he was to accept their submission. Their 
forgiveness was half-way to the pacification. The submission 
of Louis XII. sealed Leo's efforts as a peace-maker : it did not 
add to his reputation as Head of Christendom, and neither on 
the whole did the further proceedings of the Council. For Leo 
had pardoned Louis on the dangerous ground that his quarrel 
with Julius was a personal one. Once admitted that the Pope 
could quarrel as man to man with a prince who set his authority 
at defiance, the fabric of the spiritual supremacy was under- 
mined. It would not be long before the ingenuous admission 
of Leo would be turned against the Papacy, and it would be 
possible for the other side to insist that ecclesiastical duels 
should be fought on secular ground alone. In other directions 
Leo showed a dangerous laxity in enforcing his prerogative. 
Free discussion of the immortality cf the soul was a fashion in 
20 



1 



306 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

intellectual circles in Leo's day, and the, Pope's denunciation of 
this ecclesiastical danger was so mild that it seemed to show too 
plainly his sympathy with the offenders. His Reform Edict 
was useless by reason of the same defect. Such efforts were not 
in keeping with the character of Leo. He was a man of the 
world, and he had cultivated the gentle cynicism which he in- 
herited from his father. Too worldly to condemn worldiness 
and too discreet to condone it, he soothed the reformers with 
half- measures and chid the offenders with a smile. 

Having settled the affairs of France, Leo inaugurated his 
family policy by creating two young Cardinals in the Borgian 
manner, for family reasons alone. Giulio de' Medici was the 
illegitimate son of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. 
Leo took great pains to establish his legitimacy by a legal 
fiction, for, unlike Alexander VI., he was always careful to keep 
on the right side of prejudice in such matters. Nobody believed 
in Giulio's legitimacy, but, in some way, it shocked public 
opinion less when it was screened by a lie than when it was 
openly declared. Giulio was able and unscrupulous, and he 
served his cousin well in the political field ; his good looks and 
distinguished bearing made him an ornamental figure which 
Raphael loved to perpetuate. The other young Cardinal, Inno- 
cenzo Cybo, was Leo's nephew, and some scandal attended his 
creation by reason of his youth, for he was only twenty-one, and 
his appointment was a flagrant assertion of Leo's family policy. 
In the same year, Giuliano de' Medici — rightly described by 
Lorenzo as his "good" son, in contradistinction to the "wise" 
Giovanni and the "foolish" Piero — was brought to Rome with 
great honour, created a Roman baron, and established in great 
splendour at the Pope's right hand. The reason for this move 
was that Leo saw in his brother's honesty an obstacle to his own 
Bchemes for Florence. Giuliano would be an admirable figure- 
head for the Medici House, but the young Lorenzo, son of Piero, 
was a more promising instrument for the government by corrup- 
tion and craft which was the basis of Medici power in Florence. 
Giuliano, meanwhile, was useful in his way, as Cesare had been 
to Alexander, as an eligible bachelor whose hand could be 
bought by a promise of friendship to the Pope ? supported by a 
substantial dowry. After various negotiations, Giuliano was 
married to Filiberta of Savoy, was made Duke of Nemours, and, 
for a moment, he became the link which held the Papacy in 
alliance with France. But before the death of Giuliano in 1516, 
the link had already failed to hold. 

One of the articles of Leo's political faith was that " when 



JULIUS II. AND LEO X. 307 

you have made a league with any prince, you ought not, on that 
account, to cease from treating with his adversary ". As soon 
as Louis XII. had submitted to the Papacy, the Holy League 
began to break up, and Leo put his precept into practice by 
negotiating with each separate State, and entering into secret 
understandings with France, the Swiss, Ferdinand, and Venice. 
In 1515 events began to move, when Francis I. and Charles V. 
came on the scene in France and Spain respectively. Francis was 
at that time the more dangerous of the two, and Leo accordingly 
made the alliance which Giuliano's marriage was to seal. But 
the young King of France was not prepared to conquer Naples 
for his Medici uncle-in-law, and, the marriage notwithstanding, 
Leo arranged a league against France, pivoting on England, in 
consequence of which the English minister, Wolsey, became a 
Cardinal. In August, 1515, the great battle of Marignano re- 
vealed to Italy the might of the new chivalry of France under 
the influence of the chevalier- king. Leo's skill and lack of 
scruple was never better shown than in the peace which he 
made at Bologna with Francis in the following December. With 
Florence ever uppermost in his mind, he undertook to restore 
his Ferrarese conquests to Francis in return for leave to seize 
the lands of the Duke of Urbino. For this wanton plan of 
aggression Leo could plead a certain measure of right : he taxed 
the Duke with the murder of Alidosi, and made the most of his 
past animosity to the Medici. But the dying Giuliano rightly 
condemned the project as a crime, and in vain begged his 
brother to refrain. Giuliano died before the conquest of Urbino 
was carried out, but he must have known his brother too well to 
hope that his pleading would avail. Leo succeeded in taking 
his duchy from Francesco della Rovere, and the exploit did him 
no credit. In the enterprise of Maximilian against Milan, 
undertaken in the same year, he showed still further his skill in 
"playing marvellously with both hands" (Letter to Wolsey). 
He sent Cardinal Dorizzi as a mediator between Maximilian and 
Francis, giving him secret instructions to act in the interests of 
France, since the Austro- Spanish House was more dangerous to 
Medici prospects than the French King. He counted, at the 
same time, that " it seemed good to him to proceed by temporis- 
ing and dissembling like the rest ". 

It would be unprofitable to follow too closely the shifting 
grounds of Leo's diplomacy. In the great game, of which 
Machiavelli had laid down the rules, he played an inconspicu- 
ous and inglorious part. In response to the alliance between 
Francis and Charles, he intrigued with Maximilian and Henry 



308 A SHORT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of England for the defence of the Church, and signed the peace 
of Noyon. The instability of Maximilian — always a factor to be 
reckoned with by his friends and foes alike — led to the loss of 
Urbino after eight months' warfare in 1517. Meanwhile, pre- 
occupations of a more engrossing nature held Leo's attention in 
Rome. The historian Michelet describes Leo as "unrieur, un 
farceur," and perhaps, after all, the comedy element pervaded 
his reign more persistently than any other. It is impossible to 
discover how far Leo was serious in dealing with the so-called 
" conspiracy " of the Cardinals in 1517. The situation itself 
seems to have been half a farce and half a tragedy, in which 
the actors are alternately burlesque and sinister, moving us to 
horror, pity, and ridicule as the grim joke unfolds. The growing 
influence of Giulio de' Medici, the failure of the enterprise 
against Urbino, and an increasing political activity at the papal 
court had made Leo unpopular with a group of Cardinals, of 
whom old Rafaello Riario was the leading spirit. A private 
quarrel between Leo and the boy-Cardinal of Siena, in which the 
old hostility of Florence against the neighbour city is traceable, 
led to some rash words. An absurd plot to poison the Pope, by 
means of bandages to be applied to the Pope's sore place by an 
assassin-doctor, was revealed, and the Cardinals Petrucci and 
Sauli were imprisoned. The Pope acted up to the crisis, the 
gates of the Vatican were barred, and a Consistory was called at 
which two other Cardinals who were said to be implicated were 
driven by terror to confession. The most sensational arrest was 
that of Rafaello Riario, for rumour declared that Leo was at last 
about to avenge himself on the nephew of Sixtus IV. for the 
part which he had played in the Pazzi conspiracy. But Leo 
contented himself with extorting vast sums of money from 
Cardinals Riario, Soderini, Sauli, and Hadrian di Costello. The 
Medici vengeance was reserved for young Petrueci and his 
accomplices. Alfonso Petrucci was strangled in prison because 
he had no powerful friends to intercede for him. The doctor 
and the secretary who had engineered the plot were dragged 
through the streets on hurdles, torn with hot pincers, and 
gibbeted on the bridge of St. Angelo. Paris de Grassis, the 
Master of the Ceremonies, who understood Leo better than any- 
one, maintained that the affair had not really perturbed the 
Pope. He had made a great deal of money out of it, he had 
struck terror into the College — a peculiar pleasure for an easy- 
going man — and he had paved the way for the creation of thirty- 
one new Cardinals. This last stroke would have provoked 
criticism if anyone had dared to criticise at such a moment. It 



JULIUS II. AND LEO X. 309 

beat the record of previous creations, it gave immense power 
and security to the Medici House, and it brought money and new 
services to Leo. 

This new instrument of power helped Leo's family projects. 
Reinforced by a new and complacent Curia, he sent the young 
ruler of Florence to France to obtain a royal bride. The stu- 
pendous presents which Lorenzo took with him from Leo im- 
pressed even the magnificent Francis, and the marriage treaty 
was soon arranged. Poor little Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne 
— " trop plus belle pour le marie " — was the victim chosen to be 
the wife of the diseased and dissolute young Medici. The 
marriage was both a tragedy and a failure. Madeleine died in 
a year, after giving birth to the little "Duchessina," who was 
one day to be Queen of France. Lorenzo died soon after her, 
and with him Leo's hopes for the Medici. Giulio alone remained, 
and two little bastards of doubtful parentage — Ippolito and 
Alessandro. The ill-fated little Caterina brought " all the catas- 
trophes of Hellas " to the mind of Leo when she came into his 
presence. Henceforth Leo ceased to scheme for his family, and 
the crafty mind of Giulio directed his policy. The Pope turned 
to his hunting and his buffoonery for distraction, and for 
consolation to hi? artists and men of letters. 

The foreign policy in these last days of Leo was more tortuous 
than ever. On the death of Maximilia 1 in 1519. Charles, King of 
Spain and ruler of the Netherlands, inherited the Empire For two 
years the Medici Pope vacillated between Francis and Charles, 
and finally settled into an alliance with Charles in 1521. Charles 
undertook to restore Parma and Piacenza, now in the hands of 
France, and Leo's sole desire beyond this was to maintain his 
hold on Urbino and Modena. The maintenance of the States of 
the Church had supplanted his family schemes, and beyond this, 
to his credit it must be said, he was anxious to free Italy from 
her invaders by playing off France against the Empire. The 
fortunate Pope may be said to have died of joy. News was 
brought to him at his villa of the complete defeat of the French, 
the seizure of Milan by Charles's general, and the fulfilment of 
the undertaking about Parma and Piacenza. Leo had been out 
hunting, and the excitement of the news following on the day's 
labours caused a bad chill. Incompetent doctors did the rest, 
and in a week Leo died, in his forty-sixth year, a comparatively 
happy man in spite of the catastrophe which had overtaken the 
House of Lorenzo. 

On the whole Leo had succeeded in "enjoying" the Papacy. 
He had surrounded himself with the poets and artists whom he 



310 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

delighted to honour; he had lived a spacious and genial life, 
giving and taking all that good fellowship could offer and more 
than the Papacy could afford. He had the faculty of ignoring 
the things which should have disturbed his peace, and he chose 
to regard the warnings which reached him of the religious un- 
rest in Europe as a little disturbance beyond the Alps which 
would subside if it was not unduly noticed. It is significant that 
Leo disappointed those whom he might have satisfied. He was 
"a prince," said a contemporary, "who greatly deceived the 
high expectations entertained of him when he was raised to the 
Papacy, since he therein displayed more cunning and less good- 
ness than the world had imagined of him ". In other words, 
they had not reckoned on his family ambition. Goodness in 
the ordinary sense was hardly expected of a Renaissance Pope, 
and the description does not imply any reflection on his morals. 
All the charges of viciousness brought against Leo break down 
upon inquiry, and if he failed to condemn these things in his 
court, it cannot be said that his personal life set a bad example. 
Most probably he looked on morals with the same indulgent 
cynicism that he adopted towards life in general. In religion, 
too, he tolerated any degree of atheism in the men about him, 
while he was personally punctilious in his performance of his 
religious duties, and his love of beautiful ceremonial was well 
known. Leaders of Protestantism have labelled Leo the " Pagan 
Pope " and the " Papal Maecenas ". More is read into their con- 
demnation than the facts admit. It is true that he dined with 
courtesans and consorted with atheists, but these things do not 
necessarily imply anything worse than excessive tolerance. And 
yet the verdict against Leo is a just one, for his failure to con- 
demn was treachery to the great principle which the Papacy 
held in trust for the world. His way of life, although it was not 
vicious, was often unedifying, and his standards, if they were 
not as low as those of Alexander VI. or as perverted as those of 
Julius II., were more utterly frivolous. The supreme example 
of a great dilettante, he could rise at times to heights of genuine 
patriotism, but Italy, in common with other noble ideals, 
"divided his attention with manuscripts and sauces, painters 
and falcons" (Macaulay). 



CHAPTER XXVI 
THE REFORMATION, a.d. 1517-1550 

THE soul of the Papacy woke slowly from the magic 
sleep of the Renaissance to the waking reality of the 
Reformation. The reform movement never seemed 
more utterly dead than in the year 1517, which brought the 
Latgran Council of Leo to its inglorious end. And yet, in the 
same year Luther fixed his ninety-five theses against indulgences 
to the door of the Church of Wittenberg. Leo took the affair 
lightly, and in spite of warnings from Maximilian and from 
others who saw further than he, persisted in looking on it as a 
" monk's quarrel". Even when he felt obliged to summon 
Luther to Rome on a charge of heresy, he was not seriously 
troubled. He sent Cardinal Cajetan to extort Luther's sub- 
mission without in the least appreciating the issues — or the man. 
Cajetan was a good theologian, but he approached the situation 
from the wrong point of view. He came in the might of the 
Catholic faith to crush an heretical monk, and when Luther 
asked for discussion, his Italian mind accused him of wanting a 
tournament. The situation was significant, and so were the 
steps which led Luther into open revolt against the Papacy. 
Luther's career belongs to the history of Protestantism, but the 
principles bound up with it and the forces which it set in motion 
produced the greatest crisis which ever faced the Papacy. 

Since the time of Marsiglio of Padua political theory had 
not played a practical part in the making of papal history. In 
the fourteenth century, Louis of Bavaria happened to find in 
Marsiglio the philosophy which he wanted to give a creed to his 
party. In Luther the same views, differently stated, happened 
to be allied to unusual qualities of character in the career of a 
political reformer. Between Marsiglio and Luther lay the 
conciliar movement, which had failed because it had identified 
itself with a political system which was not strong enough to 
assert itself against the restored Papacy, on the one hand, and 
the growing monarchies on the other. The federal idea, to which 
the Councils anchored themselves, had no chance against the 

311 



312 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

personal monarchies of the fifteenth century. The power of 
Martin V. had overruled the decree Frequens, and his successors 
had held their own against the conciliar menace from various 
motives and in different ways. Even Eugenius IV. had managed 
to defeat the Council of Basle, by the spurious prestige which he 
acquired by the so-called union of East and West. But the 
spirit which made the Councils dangerous haa never died. It 
was carried across the Alps to sterner climates, where it gained 
a wider freedom. Signs of its life appear in the fear which 
haunted Alexander VI., in the courage of Erasmus and Reuchlin, 
and in the simple fervour which inspired the German renaiss- 
ance. 

In a sense, Luther owed little to the Councils. He was first 
and last an individualist, having little in common with the 
federal democracy which was the conciliar ideal. His associa- 
tion with the territorial party, as against the peasants, on the 
one hand, and the Emperor on the other, was the result of 
political necessity combined with his inherent respect for law 
and order. Circumstances drove him into politics, and at the 
Diet of Worms, in 1521, the individual drama becomes merged 
in the European crisis. Luther, the excommunicated monk, 
passionately sincere, heart-broken, and still Catholic in spirit, is 
confronted with the young Emperor Charles, anxious to stand 
well with the Pope, but equally anxious to safeguard his own 
honour. Behind Luther stands the party which has adopted 
him, headed by Hutten and Sickingen, ready to go to all lengths 
of rebellion, and to drive their leader to the logical conclusion of 
his temerity. The moderate party, which centred round the 
neutrality of the Elector Frederick, plays the part which 
moderation is apt to play in the heat of conflict. The Edict of 
Worms confirmed the Bull of Excommunication, and Leo, on his 
death-bed, was not seriously disturbed by the state of things 
which he left in Germany. 

The successor of Leo was a Professor of Louvain who had 
been the tutor of Charles in his Netherland days. Adrian VI. 
was a complete contrast to his predecessor, and much might 
have been hoped from his election if he could have been given 
a free hand. But from the time of his arrival in Rome in 1522 
until his death in the following year, disillusion and unpopularity 
followed everything which he did. He was an ardent reformer 
of the conservative and academic type, but the practical 
opposition which he met with was too much for him, and his 
schemes melted away in the fervid atmosphere of Medicean 
intrigue which stifled him in Rome. 



THE KEFOBMATION 313 

The attitude of the papal legate at the Diet of Nurnberg was 
typical of Adrian's ideas. Lut;-er had reappeared, after a short 
retirement, and was preaching at Wittenberg in defiance of the 
Bull and the Edict. Adrian demanded that the Diet should 
enforce the Edict. The legate spoke in a conciliatory manner of 
the services which Luther had rendered in pointing out the need 
for reform. Luther, he said, was right in condemning the 
corruption of the Church, but wrong in his theology : therefore 
Luther must be put down before the reforms could be sst in 
motion, The refusal of the Diet to carry out the Edict of Worms 
proves the strength of the hold which Luther's views had gained 
in the last few months Adrian could not take any further 
steps because Charles was too strong to oppose, and Charles had 
demanded the non-interference of the Pope in German affairs as 
the price of his support. The fall of Rhodes, which the Turks 
had captured, gave Adrian special need of Charles's help. 
Troubles with Francis, who was threatening the conquest of 
Milan, were a further cause for anxiety. Adrian's last failure 
was the sacrifice of his neutrality in the great Hapsburg-Valois 
duel which was looming over Europe. His alliance with Charles 
and Henry VIII. was the final proof that politics had over- 
whelmed his religious aspirations. 

Adrian's death was tragic in its loneliness. He had not made 
a single friend in Rome. The Cardinals of the Medicean court 
despised his unworldliness and took advantage of it. The old 
Flemish woman and the two Spanish pages who formed his 
household were a cause of ridicule. He was a foreigner and an 
outsider, and he does not seem to have tried to be otherwise. 
Life as he found it in Rome must have been uncongenial in the 
extreme to his simple and severe nature. But there is greater 
pathos in the ruin of his aspirations. No Pope held loftier 
ideals than Adrian VI., but none probably achieved less. The 
fault was partly in his own will, which was firm to a point, and 
apt to give way at the wrong moment ; but the chief cause of 
his failure was the unequal strife between the forces of religion 
and politics which rocked the Papacy in the early days of the 
Reformation. 

The return of the Medicean Papacy in the election of Clement 
VII. (Giulio de' Medici) delighted the Romans, who welcomed 
the prospect of " a flourishing court and a brave pontificate ". 
There was little doubt which of the two forces would dominate 
the new reign ; the only question which remained doubtful was 
as to which side Clement would take in the Hapsburg-Valois 
struggle. The situation depended a good deal on the see-saw of 



314 A SHOKT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

influences exerted over him by Giberti and Schomberg, the am- 
bassadors of the rival courts. He found the Papacy allied with 
Charles, and at first it was convenient to let this alliance hold. 
Cardinal Campeggio attended the Diet of Nurnberg in 1524, and 
gained, with the support of Charles and his brother, Ferdinand, a 
promise that the Edict against Luther should be enforced " as 
well as they were able, and as far as possible ". This rather un- 
satisfactory undertaking was the utmost that Campeggio could ob- 
tain : it was clear that the struggle was no longer against Luther 
but against Lutheranism, which was not to be trifled with. The 
proposal of the General Council to be held in Germany, and 
to be preceded by a preliminary Diet at Speyer, was a cause 
of acute anxiety to Clement. The character of Giulio de' 
Medici, the bar sinister which branded his name, the relation- 
ship which he all but acknowledged to the boy, Alessandro, 
titular Duke of Florence, and the well-known indiscretions of 
his youth, were each a sufficient reason for his reluctance to face 
the moral inquisition of a Council. But there seemed to be no 
way out, short of immense loss of allegiance in Germany. The 
reforms brought forward by Campeggio, in the hope of holding 
the moderate party, were insufficient and merely irritating. 
They aimed at the suppression of heresy rather than the con- 
cession of papal prerogatives and the enforcement of higher 
moral standards. The boycotting of the University of Witten- 
berg was a tactless blow at the territorial dignity of the Elector. 
But Campeggio's reforms, inadequate as they were, mark the 
beginning of the conservative reformation, in which lay the best 
hope of the Catholic Church. 

The alliance with Charles had served its purpose, and Clem- 
ent's mind turned back to the Medicean schemes of neutrality 
favourable to the interests of Florence. He began to detach 
himself from Charles, entered into secret understandings with 
Francis, and allowed the Medici captain, John of the Black 
Bands, to take a French command. But the battle of Pavia, in 
1525, brought the unexpected defeat and capture of Francis, 
and the downfall of Clement's hopes. Charles never trusted 
Clement again, but he came to an understanding with him, and 
contemptuously acceded to the Pope's "bargaining for small 
gains". At this moment Clement might have put himself 
at the head of an Italian league, and reclaimed Italy from 
the ravages of the rival powers. But he had no desire to be a 
national Pope. Schomberg pointed out to him that Florence had 
more to fear from the Italian States than from external power, 
arid the reflection took root} m his mind. In January, 1526, 



THE KEFOKMATION 315 

he gave his support to the Treaty of Madrid, which gave Francis 
his freedom, on the understanding that the French King would 
not keep faith with Charles. Four months later the League of 
Cognac was made between Clement, Francis, Venice, and Milan 
for the defence of Italy against the Emperor. The Imperial 
Minister, Moncada, did his best to break up the League, but the 
Pope stood unwontedly firm, and Charles prepared his armies. 

From the beginning the League of Cognac was unfortunate, 
and the course of events showed it to be clumsily put together 
and badly engineered. Its general, the Duke of Urbino, was 
hostile to the Pope. France and England soon made it clear 
that they meant to be sleeping partners. Cardinal Colonna, 
whose influence had secured Clement's election, was a strong 
Imperialist, and, therefore, a declared antagonist. Clement 
heard with terror of his growing friendship with Moncada, the 
Imperial Minister, and the news of the strong Neapolitan- 
Colonna force which was being raised led to a momentary 
truce. The news of the battle of Mohacs, which overthrew the 
kingdom of Hungary, and brought the Turks to the Danube, 
startled Clement into a display of public spirit, and led him to 
open negotiations for the reunion of Christendom. Moncada's 
raid on Rome with the Colonna forces interrupted all larger en- 
deavours, and opened the eyes of the Pope to the unpopularity 
of his civic rule. For the Romans failed to rise in his defence, 
and left him to " settle his own quarrel ". His first idea was 
to receive the rebels, like Boniface VIII. , in full pontificals, but a 
misgiving, perhaps, as to his fitness for the part led to his flight 
at the last moment to St. Angelo. The Spanish soldiers who 
were with the Colonnesi plundered the Vatican "like Turks 
despoiling the churches of Hungary," and brought Clement to 
terms with Moncada. He agreed to forgive Cardinal Colonna 
and his family, and for a month he kept his word. But as soon 
as he had had time to collect a sufficient force to retaliate, a 
barbarous vendetta expedition destroyed the Colonna castles and 
the villages which they sheltered. 

After this prelude, events moved quickly. Screened by 
diplomatic negotiations, Charles poured his armies into Italy. 
The Spaniards, under Bourbon, had already garrisoned Milan : 
another force of 10,000 landed at Gaeta under Lannoy, Frunds- 
berg was crossing the Alps with 12,000 Lanzknechts, on fire with 
Lutheran fanaticism. The Duke of Urbino tried to attack Bour- 
bon and Frundsberg at once, and failed in both directions. John 
of the Black Bands was killed in a skirmish, thus depriving the 
Jjeague of its most brilliant leader. Alfonso of Ferrara broke 



316 A SHOET HISTOEY OP THE PAPACY 

with Clement owing to his fatal habit of bargaining at a crisis, 
and led out his forces in the name of Charles. In his panic 
Clement showed himself at his worst. The Imperial deluge 
swept from the north towards Florence. All the Medici in 
Clement prompted him to save the city of his House at all costs 
— even at the expense of Rome. The truce which he patched 
up with Lannoy was madness, for it merely revealed his weak- 
ness when it was too late to stem the tide. But the concentra- 
tion of Urbino's army before Florence saved the city. The 
news of the Pope's truce fired a trail in the Imperial army. 
Starving and ill-paid, it was already on the brink of mutiny ; 
and, powerless to hold it, Bourbon decided to give it rein. 
Clement watched the crisis approach with characteristic help- 
lessness. The French General, Renzo da Ceri, tried to organise 
the army of resistance, and did so to some effect. He counted 
on the demoralisation of the invading force and the strength of 
his artillery. The storm broke against the walls of Rome, was 
beaten back, approached again, and gained a hold. A fog helped 
the attack, and foiled the Roman artillery. Bourbon's death 
inspired a supreme effort, and the city was gained. 

Meanwhile, Clement on his knees in his chapel was doing 
the right thing at the wrong time as usual. He had thought of 
going out to rally his soldiers, of cheering the civilians ; before 
that he had thought of bribing the invaders ; when the time for 
this had passed by, he did violence to his conscience by selling 
five cardinalates for a perfectly useless sum of money. At last 
he made for St. Angelo, too late for safety or for dignity, sheltered 
under the violet cloak of an episcopal friend. The surrender of 
the city on the next day was only the beginning of the calamity 
which was still to come. The sack of Rome, which followed 
during three days, is one of the nightmares of history. Of the 
three armies which took part in it, " each nationality among the 
soldiers contributed its worst qualities to the utter depravation 
of the rest ". German profanity, Spanish cruelty, and Italian 
guile combined in villainy which has never been exceeded. 
After three days they grew tired of violating women and muti- 
lating priests, and drunken brawls and riots drowned the cries 
of tortured treasure-storers. 

For a month Clement held out in St. Angelo, hoping every 
day to be relieved by the Duke of Urbino. When at last sup- 
plies began to give out, he signed the capitulation. He remained 
in the castle, virtually the Emperor's prisoner, until December, 
when he contrived to escape to Orvieto. The situation had not 
been without its difficulties for Charles. There was the question 



THE BEFOKMATION 317 

of how he was to deal with his great prize, and plenty of advice 
was offered on all sides. Some suggested the reduction of the 
Papacy to a purely spiritual office, others its removal from 
Rome. Gattinara*s counsel opposed these suggestions, fearing 
the designs of France and England. " It would be best," in his 
opinion, " to keep the Apostolic Seat so low that your Majesty 
can always dispose of it and command it. . . . The Pope and 
Cardinals have asked me to inform your Majesty on this point, 
as they think your Majesty does not want the Apostolic Seat to 
be entirely ruined." Charles's comment on the news of the 
surrender of Rome is more cautious and characteristic of him. 
" I do not know what you may have done with the Pope," he 
writes to Bourbon, not knowing of his death, " but what I desire 
is a good peace." 

At Orvieto, Clement was more uncomfortable, if anything, 
than in the castle of St. Angelo. Two English bishops, Gardiner 
and Foxe, visited him there to demand the dissolution of 
Henry's marriage from Catherine of Aragon. They describe the 
cheerless poverty and cold of Clement's apartments, and the 
wretchedness of his suite, adding that " it were better to be in 
captivity in Rome than here at liberty ". In the circumstances 
it was impossible for Clement to do what Henry wanted. 
Catherine was the aunt of his vanquisher, with whom he had 
yet to make terms. But he contrived to satisfy the English 
King with a vague promise of future concession. 

Meanwhile, the attempts of Francis on Lombardy brought 
Charles, in 1529, to the treaty of Barcelona, and an alliance, at 
the exj)ense of Florence, was made between the Emperor and 
the Pope. Charles had decided that the Pope could be more 
useful to him if he were not too deeply humiliated in the eyes 
of Europe. Florence had revolted against the Medici, and her 
liberties were to be overthrown in order that Clement should 
aggrandise his worthless son. The siege and surrender of Flor- 
ence in 1530, hastened by the treachery of her general, was an 
act of reparation on the part of Charles, whose attitude to the 
Pope had changed since 1527. This change was the result of 
the interplay of German and Italian affairs. 

In Germany, the Peasants' Revolt in 1525 had changed the 
position of Luther, and made him more dangerous than ever. 
For it had driven him definitely on to the side of law and order, 
and identified his party with the territorial princes and lesser 
nobles, who were infinitely more dangerous to the Imperium 
than the helpless rabble of Miinzer's following. To this period 
belongs the growth of Lutheran liberties, expressed in the Recess 



318 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of Speyer, which was the result of the influence of the Lutheran 
princes and the weakness of the Catholic party. To it also 
belongs " Ein feste Burg ist enser Gott," the Marseillaise of the 
Reformation, as Heine calls it. All the splendour of spiritual 
revolt found expression in Luther's hymns. Protestant exalta- 
tion had become articulate ; its appeal to the imagination 
could be set against the poetry of Catholicism. In the events 
which led up to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, Luther's philo- 
sophical position became clear. Dissociated from the "robbing, 
murdering peasants " on the one hand, and the Empire and 
Papacy on the other, Luther is the founder of a new spiritual 
kingdom. We have already noticed the essential one-ness of 
the mediaeval theory of the world. The Pope and the Emperor 
are two lights in the one firmament, two officials of the one 
Civitas Dei. They strive together, not as rival systems, but as 
rival exponents of one system. The reason why Luther is not 
the successor of the mediaeval opponents of the Papacy is that 
his attacks are directed against the system itself. He pulls 
down the firmament, with the two lights and all the stars, and 
sets another in its place. The new " Civitas Dei " is not like the 
old, ecclesiastical and traditional ; it is essentially secular, and 
yet equally essentially religious. " The sanctity of lay power 
is Luther's innovation " (Figgis), and his insistence on this 
principle is the cause of his aloofness from the peasants. The 
result of Luther's political creed travelled far in the region of 
political theory. We find it in Hooker and the theory of Divine 
Right, in the State religion of Louis XIV., and in the national 
Churches of modern States. Luther's insistence on the rights 
of the territorial prince, which found its political expression 
at last in the principle of " Cujus regio ejus religio," was the 
death-blow of the federal system which the Councils had adopted ; 
it left no room for extra-territorial rights, and the results are 
seen at the Council of Trent in the repudiation by the Pope 
himself of the idea of voting by nations. 

We have left on one side the doctrinal revolution which was 
the soul of the Protestant movement, because the political 
aspect of the Reformation alone concerns a short history of the 
Papacy. But it must be remembered that the opposing theories 
of justification and the rival streams that flowed from them have 
a deeper influence than the political forces to which they were 
allied. One of the effects of the Reformation is the separation 
of the spheres of history and religion. 

In 1530, Charles was crowned at Bologna by the Pope, who 
was still to all intents and purposes his captive of war. In 



THE KEFOKMATION 319 

return for the discomforts of his position, Clement regained 
Florence for his family, and soothed his pride by the marriage 
of the unlovable Alessandro with Margaret, the Emperor's 
illegitimate daughter. Two years later, a second meeting of 
Charles and Clement at Bologna saw a modification of the 
situation. Charles was anxious to hurry on the proposed 
Council in Germany, which Clement was equally anxious to 
delay. Clement meanwhile had made overtures to France, and 
a marriage was proposed between the little " Duchessina " and 
the second son of Francis. Charles did not believe in the 
likelihood of this marriage or he would have taken definite 
steps to prevent it, for Francis was on good terms with the 
Protestants, and the co-operation of the Pope in Germany was 
essential to the suppression of the Lutheran princes. But in 
spite of the Valois pride on which Charles had counted, Caterina 
de' Medici made the first real royal marriage of her house. 
There was great rejoicing at the magnificent wedding solemnised 
by the Pope at Marseilles, and the sumptuous presents of the 
Medici once more astonished the court of France. Only the 
unhappy Caterina remained a pathetic little figure, and looked 
out on the splendid scene with dark eyes of tragedy. It was 
said that she left her heart in Italy with the "comely and 
courteous" Ippolito, her cousin, whose popularity in Florence 
had stood in the light of Alessandro, and who was driven in 
spite of tears and prayers to adopt a clerical profession for 
which he was entirely unsuited. 

The familiar quarrel with Henry of England was the final 
disaster of Clement's reign. Since the time when Henry's 
ministers came as suppliants to Orvieto, the attitude of the 
King had changed. It became clear that Charles was master of 
the situation, and that he would not tolerate the divorce. In 
summoning the case to Rome, Clement was merely declaring 
his real intention not to give his consent. The series of strata- 
gems by which Henry tried to circumvent the Pope's opposition 
are well known. The inaction of Clement, his refusal to give 
way or to strike effectively for Catharine, irritated Henry, and, 
at the same time, made it possible for him to defy the Pope in 
practice without committing himself to rebellious language. 
Perpetual remonstrances arrived in England, urging Henry to 
give up living with Anne Boleyn and to take back Catharine. 
Francis supported Henry in refusing to go to Rome. Temporising 
on both sides enabled Henry to undermine the papal authority 
in England before the arrival of the Bull of Excommunication. 
The fall of Wolsey and the rise of Thomas Cromwell had marked 



320 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

a change in Henry's policy which led step by step to the 
alienation of English obedience. It was a personal quarrel 
between two politicians : no doctrinal questions were involved, 
and Henry was as Catholic in mind after the breach as before 
it. It was true that he borrowed the courage to defy prejudice 
and tradition from the Protestants, and occasionally it became 
necessary, as at the time of the passing of the Ten Articles, to 
make common cause with his fellow-rebels in Germany. But 
he did so reluctantly, and soon retracted whatever doctrinal 
concessions he had been persuaded to make. In the autumn of 
1534, Clement VII. closed his inglorious career. "The very 
sport of misfortune," it is almost impossible to pity him, for he 
brought his troubles on himself by his particularly unattractive 
faults. Even his family had disappointed him. The quarrels 
of Alessandro and Ippolito, who had been rivals from their 
birth, had caused him great annoyance, and if Alessandro was 
indeed his son, as is supposed, he cannot have been proud of 
him. Stories of his brutality and unpopularity saddened the 
last year of Clement's life, and must have made him feel that 
he had lived in vain. 

The election of Alessandro Farnese (1534) seemed to recall 
for the Cardinals the good days of the Renaissance, and they 
welcomed him as a man of genial culture, who bore about him 
signs of his education at Lorenzo's court, and promised to restore 
the classical tradition of Rome. His first act as Paul III. 
indicated higher aspirations. He appointed six Cardinals, some 
of whom were entirely unknown to him, for their virtue and 
distinction alone. All these six men belonged to a party which 
had grown up in Italy and from which the Papacy had much to 
hope. The Reformation, in its wider aspect, was not a purely 
German movement. In Italy there were many who sympathised 
with the doctrines of Luther, and who longed for the purification 
of religion. The " Oratory of Divine Love," founded in Rome in 
the days of Leo X. , became a nucleus of renewed spiritual life. 
Men of different temperament and divergent aspiration met 
together to discuss the purification of the Church. The gentle 
Gsetano da Thiene, and Caraffa, the fervent zealot, who together 
founded the priests' order of the Theatines, were among the 
leaders of the Oratorian party. Its influence spread to 
Venice and attracted Contarini and Cortese. Other prominent 
thinkers of the Oratory were Reginald Pole, Giberti, Morone and 
Sadoleto — all men of mental distinction and all devoted to the 
principles of reform. The reform movement in Italy had a 
character distinct from Protestantism, although the doctrines 



THE BEFOBMATION 321 

which it made its own had much in common with Protestant 
teaching. But the Italian reformers were fundamentally loyal 
to the Papacy. They held that " no corruption can be so great 
as to justify a defection from the sacred union ". So far they 
were all agreed, and the report of the commission of 1537 for 
which they were responsible, under the auspices of Paul III., 
was ridiculed by the Protestants as a half-measure. As the 
Catholic reform movement advanced, it showed a tendency to 
split in two ; there was the extreme Catholic and conservative 
party, of which Caraffa was the typical representative, and there 
was the compromise party, eager for reunion with the Protestants 
and willing: to give ground in certain directions if it could be 
met in the same spirit by the opponents. The hope of the 
"liberal" Catholic reformers is revealed at the Congress of 
Ratisbon — of the "conservative" wing at the Council of Trent. 
The election of Paul III. seemed to bring the Catholic reform 
party into its own, but, in fact, his pontificate was a disappoint- 
ment. His character was a subtle blend of good and evil, and 
his motives were seldom pure. A genuine interest in reform 
and a private life which badly needed it had somehow to be 
brought into harmony. Gradually his weaknesses choked his 
good intentions, and in the end he became a sower of tares. 
His politics were dictated by Borgian principles. He struggled 
to keep the peace between Charles and Francis in order to in- 
crease the power of his sons and his grandchildren. He married 
his grandson Ottavio to the Emperor's daughter, the widow of 
Alessandro de' Medici. He seized Camerino to give him a duchy, 
and plotted a larger enterprise against Milan. Another grand- 
child was married to the Valois Duke of Vendome, to keep the 
balance of his friendship true to its impartial ideal. Paul III. 
found himself in the gratifying position of peacemaker between 
the Valois and Hapsburg rivals. The meeting between Charles and 
Francis, which he had arranged in 1538, was so successful that 
Paul became jealous of the friendship which he had made. The 
truce which had been arranged for ten years endured for three, 
and Charles had plenty to do in the short respite. Dangers be- 
set him in Germany from Catholic princes as well as from Pro- 
testants. The Protestant League of Schmalkald had asserted 
its power against the Imperial Council. The ecclesiastical princes 
of the Catholic party were on the verge of joining the Lutheran 
confederacy for the purpose of opposing the authority of Charles. 
The Emperor's hands had been so full with his French and 
Turkish campaigns that he had let Germany slide, and great 
care was needed in getting back his hold. The confusion of 
21 



322 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

parties — the divisions among the Catholics and the temporary 
union of the Protestants — resulted in the first real approach to 
union at the Congress of Ratisbon in 1541. 

The persuasive gentleness of Contarini at Ratisbon was the 
outcome of the "liberal" reform movement. He and his op- 
ponent, Melancthon, found themselves in complete sympathy on 
the four leading points of dogma which were under discussion. 
Never was there a controversy carried on with such genuine de- 
sire of the combatants to meet each other half-way, and yet for 
this very reason the Congress of Ratisbon failed. Perhaps there 
was too much readiness to give way on Contarini's part ; perhaps 
the sterner spirits among the Protestants detected the dilettante 
element which prevented the liberal Catholics from taking any 
great part in the remaking of Christendom. Two things are 
certain, that the Pope was not enthusiastic at the harmonious 
results of the Congress, and that the " conservative " Catholic 
reformers were definitely displeased. Pole's letter to Contarini, 
saying that " When I observed this unanimity of opinion I felt 
a delight such as no harmony of sounds could have inspired me 
with," contrasts curiously with the verdict that "His Holiness 
neither approves nor disapproves ". 

The explanation of the failure at Ratisbon was fundamentally 
a political one. Peace with the Protestants would be too great 
an advantage for Charles, and neither Paul nor Francis desired 
reunion at such a price. Henceforth it is possible to trace in 
Paul's policy a fantastic tendency to wish well to the Protestant 
cause. In the wars of Charles against the League of Schmal- 
kald the Pope hardly disguised his disappointment at the 
Emperor's success, and after Charles's victory of Muhlberg, Paul 
wrote to Francis an exhortation to support such of the Protest- 
ant princes as still held out. The summons issued by Paul to 
the Council of Trent for the following year was an attempt to 
reassert the sole right of the Pope to assemble a General Council, 
and at the same time to forestall any attempt of Charles to do 
the same. It was clear that the Council must be held, and it 
behoved the Pope to choose his opportunity. Some delay in the 
preliminary business allowed the propitious moment to go by, 
and the Council did not really open until December, 1545, when 
a renewed breach between Charles and the Protestants favoured 
Paul's policy once more. For the farther Charles and the Pro- 
testants could be kept apart, the better were Paul's chances of 
driving a good bargain with him. In the interval between the 
first summons of the Council and its actual opening, the tension 
between Paul and Charles was very marked. The renewal of the 



THE EEFOKMATION 323 

war with France not only made the Council an impossibility, but 
it revealed the Pope's partiality for Francis and irritated Charles 
into an almost English attitude of independence. He showed a 
tendency to deal with the Lutherans himself in German Diets ; 
he even tried to have the Council transferred from Trent to a 
more definitely German city. The Pope's counter-threat to hold 
it in Rome or Bologna brought him to a more amenable mood, 
which Paul seized upon for the opening of proceedings in Trent. 

Paul III. could reasonably plead that a Pope of nearly eighty 
was too old to preside at a Council. His three presidents were 
representative of the three chief Catholic parties. Del Monte 
personified the old regime — worldly and unregenerate, and, as 
such, opposed to reform. Cervini belonged to the narrow, con- 
servative, high papal party, zealous for reform but still more so 
for definition. Reginald Pole represented the humanistic and 
tolerant reform party, which still clung to the hope of reunion 
with the Protestants. His influence was slight and his party 
was ineffective, in spite of, or because of, its touch of subtlety 
and its intellectuality. Opposed to these three parties on politi- 
cal grounds was the Emperor's party, from which the Pope had 
much to fear. The Imperial programme was simple enough : 
the reform of the Church " in head and members ". To circum- 
scribe its influence became the chief object of the Pope, and of 
all who felt that the undiminished authority of the Papacy was 
essential to the well-being of Christendom. In the preliminary 
business the issue between Charles and Paul was brought to a 
head in the contest over the order of procedure. The papal 
party contended that the definition of dogma should precede 
reform ; the Spanish Bishops, under Charles's orders, stood out 
for the precedence of reform. A compromise determined that 
the two should first be dealt with at the same time in separate 
commissions, and then each should be heard alternately in 
Council. The advantage lay with the Pope, who, through the 
legates, could prolong the dogmatic discussions at his will. 

The importance of the first period of the Council (December, 
1545 — March, 1547) is shown by its two most striking features. 
The first is the absence of the Protestant element, and the 
second is the prominence of the Jesuits. The Protestants had 
nothing to hope from a Council held under the auspices of a 
Pope who wanted nothing less than reunion, and an Emperor 
who was at war with them. The nearest approach to Protestant- 
ism is found in the speeches of Seripando, the mental successor 
of Contarini, in his controversy with the Jesuit Laynez on the 
justification problem. Seripando was no more successful than 



324 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

Contarini had been. Laynez brought the battery of his positiv- 
ism to bear on the delicate framework of Seripando's compro- 
mise, and foiled the last attempt to bridge the gulf between 
Catholic and Protestant doctrine. It was the first great victory 
of the Company of Jesus, and it established its right to bear the 
standard of restored Catholicism. The spiritual genius of Igna- 
tius Loyola had already created his band of personal followers 
into the organism of "subordination and mutual supervision" 
which was to rule the Catholic world. In 1540, Paul III. had 
established the " Company " as an Order under certain conditions ; 
having tested its value, he confirmed it unconditionally in 1543. 
The strange blend of militarism and mysticism in the soldier- 
saint is reflected in the wonderful spiritual discipline of the 
Jesuits. Their vow of absolute obedience to the Pope made 
them the natural "fighting force" of the new Catholicism. 
Ignatius had looked on the Council of Trent chiefly as an oppor- 
tunity for advertisement. The Jesuits were to vindicate their 
claims in the eyes of the world : they were to preach, but not to 
contend, to mix with the world and not to offend it with excessive 
asceticism ; above all, they were never to support any view which 
had the appearance of an innovation. The conspicuous successes 
of Laynez and Salmeron had the desired effect, and at Trent the 
Jesuits came into their kingdom. In Spain they became the 
confessors of the Court ; in Louvain, Peter Faber laid the founda- 
tions of the Jesuit empire of education, which was the firmest 
of all their strongholds. St. Francis Xavier had already sailed 
for the East Indies to become the Apostle of the New World. 
The secret of the Jesuits, hitherto unknown in community life, 
was the combination of self-abnegation with free development of 
individuality. The Jesuit was an instrument of the finest work- 
manship for highly-specialised use, never to degenerate into a 
clumsy tool, never to foil the hand of the Master. 

The Council had not been entirely amenable to papal influ- 
ence, and Paul had some cause for apprehension. The question 
of the residence of Bishops in their dioceses had produced a 
discussion of papal as against episcopal authority, in which the 
Spanish Bishops had taken a leading part. Moreover, the situa- 
tion in Germany was becoming inconveniently favourable to 
Charles, and Francis was playing adroitly on the fears of the 
Pope. At last Paul tried to transfer the Council to Bologna on 
the pretext of an epidemic at Trent. Charles was furious ; he 
ordered the Spanish Bishops to remain at Trent, and published 
an Interim in Germany by which ecclesiastical affairs were to be 
arranged until the revival of the Council of Trent. Paul found 



THE KEFOKMATTON 325 

that his Council of Bologna was ignored, so he suspended it in 
September, 1549, and fell back on the old plan of reform by a 
commission of Cardinals. 

Troubles of another kind were darkening the last days of the 
old Pope. Among the many ways in which he had offended 
Charles, none was more serious than his grant of the towns of 
Parma and Piacenza to his son, Pierluigi Farnese. His attempt to 
prove that he had indemnified the Church by giving up Camerino 
and Nepi in exchange had fallen rather flat. Moreover, Pierluigi 
was a worthless person who had become the nucleus of anti- 
Imperial feeling in Italy. The assassination of Pierluigi in 
September, 1547, and the supposed complicity of the Imperial 
Governor of Milan brought things to a climax. Paul arranged, 
but did not actually sign, a close treaty of alliance with France, 
and, at this point, Charles published the Interim. Paul's ulti- 
mate decision to restore Piacenza to the Church (and to its 
overlord, the Emperor) led to a rebellion against the Pope by his 
grandson, Ottavio Farnese, which reduced the old man to grief 
and fury. The discovery that another and favourite grandson 
was also implicated in the revolt broke his heart, and, after a 
stormy interview with the offender, he died. 

Cardinal del Monte was elected, after a long conclave, by the 
French and German parties, combining in unwonted harmony 
to advance the claims of peace. Julius III.'s pontificate (1550- 
1555) was an undistinguished interlude in the period of Catholic 
reconstruction. He had shared the anti-Hapsburg views of his 
predecessor, and he was not likely to be the friend of reform. 
And yet Charles had supported him, because from a knowledge 
of his character he hoped that he would be politically harmless, 
and he was not deceived. In the new period of Italian wars be- 
tween Charles and the son of Francis, Henry II., Julius took 
the Emperor's side, and sent troops to help him to besiege the 
French garrison of Mirandole. Meanwhile, the Council of Trent 
had been reopened, and the old difficulties with the Spanish 
bishops were likely to endanger the new friendship between 
Pope and Emperor. Troubles, too, with the Protestant envoys 
had revealed the utter hopelessness of attempting any further 
mediation. The rebellion of the Elector Maurice against Charles 
was a timely relief for the Pope, and the Council was once more 
prorogued. From this point until his death in March, 1555, 
Julius was entirely absorbed in the building of a magnificent 
villa, and in entertaining there with the old-fashioned geniality 
of bygone days. He made a truce with France in 1552, and after- 
wards ignored politics as much as he could. He provided for his 



326 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

favourite and for his relations, but he did not embark on am- 
bitious schemes on their behalf, or put himself to any trouble 
which could be avoided. The successor of Julius III. was his 
fellow-president at Trent, who took the name of Marcellus II. 
He was elected for his "goodness and matchless wisdom," but 
"the world was not worthy of him," and, on the twenty-second 
day of his pontificate, he died. 

With the election of Caraffa as Paul IV., the Catholic Re- 
formation began its independent life, free from the blasts of 
Protestantism, and untrammelled by the gentle winds of tolera- 
tion. The Papacy was no longer to spend itself in controversy 
with heterodoxy ; it accepted the situation in Germany, Geneva, 
and England, and left the sword to decide the debatable lands 
of the Netherlands and France. Catholicism in its new phase 
had no more to say to Lutheranism, since Luther had merged 
his cause in the party struggles of Germany. The struggle 
with Calvinism was more vital, for Calvin was a better states- 
man, if a lesser theologian, than Luther, and Geneva was 
a serious rival for the Jesuits in the field of education and influ- 
ence. From Geneva — " the mine whence came the ore of 
heresy" — France was drawing a steady supply of Protestant 
teachers, each of whom was a finished product of spiritual cul- 
ture. For Calvin, like Ignatius, used none but the best, and, 
unlike Luther, kept his system clear of parasite causes. By the 
second half of the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation 
had finished its part in the history of the Papacy. It would be 
idle to deny the undoubted influence on the Catholic world of 
the saints of the Reformation. Catholics like Contarini were 
not slow to recognise "the finger of God " among the Protestants, 
and in a real sense the Papacy owed its salvation to its opponents. 
It needed the clarion of militant righteousness to waken the 
Popes from the dream of Renaissance beauty to meet the dawn 
of modern Europe in the might of restored religion. 



PART V 
THE PAPACY IN MODERN HISTORY 




MAPH. CENTRAL EUROPE 

at the time of the Reformation showing 
the Lands of the Papacy. (C. 1555) 

(Boundaries of Papal Territory outlined 
with double line) 



CHAPTER XXVII 
THE COUNTER-REFORMATION, a.d. 1555-1605 

THE election of Caraffa as Paul IV. in May, 1555, was the 
opportunity for which the " conservative " Reformation 
party had been waiting, and which it had just missed in 
the pontificate of Paul 'III. Here at last was a reforming Pope 
whose character and opinions were not inconsistent. At the age 
of 79, though still young in temperament, he was the tried 
friend of the Oratory party, and his severe and unbending 
nature was an expression of the new Catholic ideal. He had 
helped to found the order of the Theatines, which was converting 
the worldly priesthood of Renaissance Rome into the self- 
sacrificing instrument of the new Catholicism. He had restored 
and presided over the Inquisition, which he loved and cherished 
as an artilleryman loves his gun. It was he who had sent 
St. Ignatius to Rome, and so ushered the Jesuits into history. He 
was one of the best haters the world has ever known. He hated 
every heretic with emotional intensity ; he hated Reginald Pole 
for his moderation ; supremely he hated Charles V., on grounds 
religious, political, and personal. As a Caraffa, he belonged to a 
family which was traditionally anti-Spanish, and a personal 
quarrel with the Spanish ruling party had already brought Paul 
up against Charles, in consequence of which he had been ejected 
from the Neapolitan Council. A still fiercer antagonism 
animated his view of Charles's religious position, for Paul 
believed that the Emperor's zeal for reforming the Papacy was 
merely a desire to stand well with the Protestants and to play 
into their hands. Through the hatred which ruled the pontificate 
of Paul shot a nobler gleam of Italian patriotism, for he was an 
idealist, and he loved to recall the days of Italy's freedom when 
the harmony of the "four strings" — Naples, Milan, Venice, and 
Rome — was still undisturbed. 

In this spirit was conceived his alliance with France, " to free 
this poor Italy from the tyranny of Spain ". With this end in 
view Carlo Caraffa, Paul's unworthy nephew, went to France to 

329 



330 A SHOBT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

buy the intriguing parties. His hatred of Charles was made to 
cover a multitude of sins, and won for him the Cardinaiate. 
Two other nephews adopted the same remunerative politics, and 
won for themselves the Colonna castles, while their mother 
dreamed of royal marriages for her daughters. So Paul became 
a nepotist, in spite of his ideals, not out of domestic affection, 
but out of political hate. The resignation of Charles V. had 
made no difference to his plans, for in Philip II. there was still a 
Hapsburg to oppose, and the quarrel was already a feud. The 
Pope's eagerness for war was not an indication of his readiness 
to make it. When Alva marched on Rome in 1556, the papal 
army fled, and only the scruples of the Imperial commander 
saved Rome from another sack. The arrival of the forces of 
France led to another expedition, with the papal army on the 
offensive. But Alva's success was more decisive than before, and 
the news of the battle of St. Quentin was followed by the recall 
of the French for fighting in France. Alva made the submission 
of a true Catholic in September, 1557, and the Pope was let off 
easily with the restoration of the Colonna castles ; but the might 
of Spain was held to be invincible. 

Thwarted in the one passion, Paul gave vent to the other. 
The ferocity of the Inquisition in the years 1558-1589 bore the 
impression of his own enthusiasm. The Holy Office for the 
Universal Church was his own project, which he had persuaded 
Paul III. to establish at Rome in 1542, on the Spanish model. 
Its functions had often been applied to political purposes, and 
for this reason it was already unpopular. Paul IV. did not 
recognise any definite line between political and religious 
offences : it would indeed have been difficult if not impossible to 
draw one. But he did not allow personal considerations to stand 
in the light of what he considered his duty. He gradually 
became aware of the bad conduct of his nephews, whose services 
he had relied upon against Spain. They were the scandal of 
Rome, and Paul's colleagues of the reform party spared him no 
knowledge of their misdeeds, when they found an opening for 
enlightening him. Suspicion deepened into certainty, and the 
Pope did not spare his own feelings or his own family pride. He 
denounced his nephews in a consistory, described their misdeeds, 
and banished them without pity, with all their dependents and 
belongings. He listened to no appeal, even from the old mother 
of the exiles. " He feels no pity : he appears to retain no 
memory of his kindred," was the comment of a courtier. 

In the last six months of his life, he gave himself entirely to 
the interests of reform. The court was reorganised, and useless 



THE COUNTEK-EEFOKMATTON 331 

offices were abolished. A " post-office" for grievances was set up 
in a public place, and the Pope kept the key of it. Begging in 
the Churches was forbidden, and fasting was enjoined on the 
court. Services were beautified: pictures were censored. And 
week by week, on Thursdays, the Holy Office went its relentless 
way, by cross-examination, by torture, and by autos dafe, sparing 
no one — working the leaven of heresy out of the Church under 
the pitiless eye of the old Pope. 

Pius IV. was elected in 1559 as a protest against his 
predecessor. He was an easy-going person who had risen to 
influence as the satellite of an adventurer-brother. His natural 
inclinations were for peace at all costs, but in practice his policy 
was modified by the influence of the worthiest of nepotates, the 
sainted Carlo Borromeo. The bonhomie of the Pope reacted on 
the rigidity of his nephew, and the blend was not particularly 
effective. On the whole, things went on very much in the same 
way as under Paul IV. The Inquisition did its work just as 
thoroughly, although the new Pope was less interested in its 
proceedings. Carlo was painstaking and efficient in the admin- 
istration, and resolute in his determination not to abuse his 
position. The unwonted quiet in Europe, which the peace of 
Cateau Cambresis had produced, remained undisturbed by the 
Papacy, in spite of the fact that it pointed undeniably to a 
Council. One solitary act of violence heralded the peace. The 
unfortunate Caraffa clan were pursued with vengeance for their 
evil deeds, and we cannot doubt that the death of the Cardinal 
and his three relations — well- deserved as it may have been — was 
to a certain extent a payment of old scores. 

The reign of Pius IV. is chiefly important because it was the 
last and most vital period of the Council of Trent. The Council 
reopened under five presidents, three of whom were whole- 
hearted supporters of the papal autocracy, and two — the Cardinal 
of Mantua and Seripando — were broad-minded upholders of 
conciliation. No Protestant party appeared at all, and the 
business of the Council was purely Catholic and internal. The 
more liberal party was headed by the Emperor Ferdinand, and 
supported by the French Bishops. Their schemes were national 
and old-fashioned, based on the plans of Constance. They were 
inclined to insist on the rights of ambassadors as against 
legates, and they asked boldly for sweeping doctrinal concessions, 
the principal ones being the Communion in both kinds and the 
marriage of the clergy. To counteract them Pius, at the 
suggestion of his legates, poured Italian Bishops into Trent, and 
so outnumbered the petitioners. In the end the Papacy was 



332 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

bound to win, for Philip's Spanish Bishops, although they shared 
the German views about the authority of the Pope, were alienated 
from them by the doctrinal questions on their programme. The 
views which estranged them were more vital than those on which 
they were united, and the result was that the discord grew, while 
each separately inclined towards peace with the common foe. 
By February, 1563, a point had been reached at which continual 
hostility and occasional bloodshed punctuated the treatises of 
rival theologians. It became obvious that " in Trent, opinions 
only met and fought ; their sources were at Rome and at the 
courts of the several Princes". If the Council was to be worth 
anything it was to make opinion, and so in April Cardinal 
Morone undertook a delicate mission to the Emperor. He found 
the Emperor angry and pugnacious, insisting on the freedom of 
ambassadors to introduce whatever subjects they pleased 
without submitting them to the legates. He rightly felt that 
the freedom of the Council depended on this. But Morone, with 
the Jesuits at work behind him, soothed Ferdinand and his party 
with compromises, and dwelt skilfully on the advantages of 
union with the Papacy. " The matter was," explained Morone, 
"to hit upon such decisions as might satisfy the Emperor 
without trenching on the authority of the Pope or the legates." 
In the end an agreement was arrived at, by which the legates 
were to bring forward any subject suggested by the ambassadors, 
and preparatory deputations were to meet in national com- 
mittees. In this way the initiative of the legates was safe- 
guarded, and the integrity of the Council preserved. From this 
point the Council "began to change its aspect and to be much 
more easy to treat with," according to Morone. The growing 
influence of the Guises in France and the importance of the 
Pope's favour to Philip in Spain contributed to the papal 
triumph. In December, 1563, the Council was dissolved amid 
" tears of gladness " for the restoration of Catholic peace. 

The importance of the Council of Trent, and its epitome, the 
" Trident ina," does not depend on the extent to which it was 
recognised. France and Spain clung to their Gallican liberties 
and royal spiritualities as before. The German Empire gave it 
no formal recognition. Elizabeth of England, whose coquetry 
did not stop short in the religious sphere, was behaving in a 
way to make the Catholic refugees at Louvain appeal to the 
Council for her deposition. But the Council had dispelled for 
ever the darkness and obscurity of mediaeval Catholicism. The 
work of doctrinal definition, for which the Jesuits at Trent were 
chiefly responsible, had shut a door in the face of the Protestants 



THE COUNTEK-KEFOKMATION 333 

and given the Catholics within a new sense of patriotism. It 
armed every Catholic layman with a new assurance, and sent 
him forth to the wars of Keligion. It meant for Europe the 
mobilisation of Catholicism. For the Papacy, the victory was 
shown in the fact that reorganisation had supplanted restriction 
as the watchword of reform, and the change was all in favour 
of the Pope's prerogative. The hierarchy became more depend- 
ent through its changed decrees of consecration, the episcopal 
vow of absolute obedience, and the reforms introduced by the 
seminaries. A most important discretionary power was left with 
the Pope for the interpretation of the decrees of Trent, and the 
general finishing up of the work which was left over. Among 
these " finishing touches " was the compiling of the new Index, 
a most important piece of work, which was completed in 1564, 
and after one revision in 1596, became the standard until the 
eighteenth century. The reform of Church music was another 
legacy from the Council to the Pope and in the exquisite work 
of Palestrina we find the truest artistic expression of the Catholic 
restoration. 

After the Council of Trent the old Pope relaxed his good 
intentions : he became more fond of his dinner and more prone 
to make bad jokes. A conspiracy against his life, led by the 
fanatic, Benedetto Accolti, failed when it came to the point 
because the conspirators were over-awed by the outward majesty 
of the restored Papacy. Carlo Borromeo carried on the work of 
government faithfully as before and with undistinguished dis- 
cretion. When his uncle died, in 1565, Carlo managed to secure 
the election of one for whom he had a greater respect, and who 
was already well known in Rome for his piety and asceticism. 
The accession of Pius V. was a day of promise for the Catholic 
world — all the more so because the sanctity which won his 
recognition as " St. Alessandrino " was not of the kind which 
transcends the imagination of his contemporaries. He was 
gentle and good, with something of the same yearning after God 
which was seen in Gregory I. He was like him, too, in finding 
the Papacy a hindrance to the inner life of the Pope, as also in 
his sudden surprising severity, and equally surprising tenderness. 
But Pius V. lacked the wide humanity of Gregory the Great, 
and above all, the grace of humour. He thought that men 
grew worse instead of better, and he punished them in later life 
with the Inquisition for the sins of their youth. He owed much 
to the devoted service of the Bishops, who now resided in their 
Sees according to the decrees of Trent. Among them were men 
like Giberti of Verona, whose life was a mirror of restored 



334 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

Catholicism, and Carlo Borromeo, who, as Archbishop of Milan, 
dedicated his genius for loyalty to the Pope whom he had 
made. 

In the pontificate of Pius V., the effects of the Council of 
Trent became apparent, particularly in two ways. The first 
of these was the disregard of the heretic world, except as a 
field for Jesuit missions. In Germany, the Religious Peace of 
Augsburg (1555) tended more and more to become a landmark, 
although the Papacy persistently ignored it. The principle of 
" Cujus Regio ejus Religio " was too convenient to be lightly set 
aside, if only because it gave something definite to fight for. It 
imposed no degree of toleration, except in an international 
sense, while it sanctioned the "Divine Right" of Princes to 
establish their own religion and secure uniformity within their 
dominions by persecuting in whichever direction they pleased. 
France was absorbed in the three-cornered intrigue of the Valois, 
the Guises, and the Bourbons. The struggle between Catholic 
and Huguenot was caught up in the tangled skein of politics, 
and Pius did his best to hold on to the thread of papal interests. 
He sent an army to France under the astonishing order to give 
no quarter to Huguenots. In the same spirit he sent a hat and 
a sword to Alva as a token of gratitude for his bloody services 
to the true religion in the Netherlands. Pius has been accused 
of complicity in the darker designs which led to the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew, soon after his death in 1572. There is no 
evidence that he had any direct part in the crime for which his 
whole generation is branded, but it is unlikely that it would 
have troubled his conscience, or that of the average good 
Catholic or Protestant of his day. Although his successor, 
Clement VIII., spoke of it as the " most joyful day " for Catholics, 
it was a barren victory, too dearly bought, for which the Papacy 
has paid, perhaps, an unfair price. For if the suffering of St. 
Bartholomew fell upon France, the injury was to Catholicism, 
while the shame can only be ascribed to the spirit of the age. 
It was the consequence of the monarchical theory which the 
Protestants had applied to religion by the " Cujus Regio" prin- 
ciple pushed to its terrible conclusion by the ruthless logic of 
France. 

In England alone the religious question was still open in the 
reign of Pius. While, on the one hand, the reign of Edward VI. 
had " worn the gloss off the new theology," the persecutions of 
Mary had " lit such a fire in England as should never be put 
out ". It remained for Elizabeth " to keep the mean between 
the two extremes " (Preface to Prayer-book). This she con- 






THE COUNTEK-KEFOBMATION 335 

trived to do until Pius lost his patience, and deposed her in 1570. 
The deposition was a fatal mistake, for its only effect in Eng- 
land was to popularise the persecution of the Catholics in a 
peace-loving land. Scotland had already seceded, and with un- 
characteristic impulsiveness, which astonished even the con- 
verts, embraced the Calvinism of John Knox in 1560. " It is 
almost miraculous," said a Scottish Protestant, "to see how the 
Word of God takes place in Scotland." 

The second general result of the Council of Trent was the 
changed position of the Papacy in Europe. The Pope ceases 
henceforth to create politics on his own account : he is content, 
except in Italy, to influence them. The nepotates of the future 
no longer aspire to be independent princes of the Cesare Borgia 
type : they aim at power of another kind. The Cardinal- 
nephews of the end of the sixteenth century are hardly less 
prominent or less magnificent than their predecessors, but they 
are the confidential officials of the Vatican, and not the par- 
venu rulers of mushroom States. But the chief instruments 
of papal foreign policy in the restored Catholic States were the 
Jesuits. In the Empire and in Catholic Germany they absorbed 
State offices and reclaimed lost ground ; in France their influence 
threaded in and out of the Catholic parties. In Spain their 
power had brought them into collision with Philip, whose abso- 
lutism was always at war with his fanaticism. No Hapsburg 
could tolerate an " Imperium in imperio," and the Spanish 
Jesuits were not diffident of claiming to be outside the royal 
prerogative. 

Like the Jesuits, Pius V. was united to Philip by his Catholi- 
cism and estranged from him by his politics. The power of 
Spain in Milan and Naples was a perpetual reminder of the 
sack of Rome, and it drove Pius into a close alliance with 
Florence. Cosimo de' Medici was an unsuitable friend for a 
Pope given to sanctity, but Pius chose not to think of this when 
he made him Grand Duke of Tuscany and adopted him as an 
ally. Cosimo proved his Catholic zeal by the surrender of his 
friend Carnesecchi to the mercies of the Inquisition. Carnesecchi 
was the last of the liberal Catholic reform party, the friend of 
Giulia Gonzaga, and the leader of the dwindling coterie which 
had once held the hopes of the reunion of Christendom in its 
keeping. He and his friends had drawn nearer to Protestantism 
as the Catholic reformers receded behind their own barriers, but 
neither his goodness nor his popularity could save him from the 
retributive justice of Pius. He was imprisoned, tortured, and 
condemned on charges of which he had been acquitted long 



336 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

before, and in 1567 he was executed in spite of all Cosimo could 
do to save him. 

The greatest political achievement of Pius was his stand 
against the Turks. In face of the growing peril of Europe he 
contrived to effect an alliance between Spain and Venice, those 
deadly rivals of the sea, and he was rewarded for his efforts by- 
Don John's victory of Lepanto in 1571, which stemmed the tide 
of Turkish success, and fixed the limit of infidel power in the 
Mediterranean. It was the great moment of his life, and he 
died before the glamour of it faded. 

Gregory XIII. (1572-1585) was an old jurist of Bologna with a 
doubtful reputation and a grown-up son. His pontificate was 
not a reversion to the old ways of the Papacy, for his education 
in the new principles was thoroughly undertaken and well 
carried out by the Jesuits and Theatines about him. They read 
him the edifying letters of Pius V., and stimulated in him a spirit 
of competitive holiness which passed very easily for personal 
piety. His relations were kept at first at a distance : even his 
old brother was forbidden to visit him, and reduced to tears of 
disappointment because he might not see the prosperity of his 
family. His son Giacomo, happily not an ambitious person, 
was at first ignored, and later allowed to become a noble of 
Venice and to marry into a noble house. Two young nephews 
became Cardinals while the Jesuits looked the other way, but 
even they were used rather than favoured. 

His policy was deep, but it worked in hidden ways and 
showed no conspicuous features. His was the era of papal plots 
in England and Ireland, which really lit the candle of anti- 
Popery in this country more than the fires of Oxford. In days 
when none would seriously complain if the Pope or anyone else 
chose to burn heretics, England conceived a deep hatred for the 
disturbers of her peace, and it was more than suspected that 
Philip's designs against Elizabeth were drafted in,, Rome. 
Gregory's firm alliance with the Guises in France was a further 
source of suspicion, for the Guises were the mainspring of the 
plots which emanated from Scotland, and the go-betweens of 
Philip and Mary Stuart. The close connection with the Guises 
established by Gregory through his Jesuits was the foundation 
of the Catholic league, which first showed its activities in France 
in 1576. 

In his home government Gregory had to face troubles which 
had been a long time brewing in connection with finance. The 
work of Catholic restoration was expensive, and the reformed 
Papacy had fewer ways of getting money within its reach than 



THE COUNTEE-KEFOEMATION 337 

in the unregenerate days of the Renaissance. Gregory spent 
lavishly in every direction and on the worthiest objects. Educa- 
tion absorbed huge sums : the Jesuits' College in Rome blossomed 
out into a " seminary of all nations ". The Pope endowed a 
German college and founded an English one. He also endowed 
a Greek college, in which national customs were preserved, so 
that the Greek boys should go back to their own people as 
Catholic missionaries without the hindrance of a broken tradi- 
tion. Still larger sums went to the wars of religion — to Charles 
IX. for the suppression of the Huguenots — to the Grand Master 
of Malta for use against the Turks. The "congregation" of 
Cardinals which dealt with finance had to find a new revenue 
to meet the new expenses. The reform of the Pope's household, 
which Pius V. had conscientiously carried out, cost much more 
than it saved, for the corruption under the old regime was profit- 
able beyond belief. The new methods of raising money which 
the Curia adopted were those which were fashionable among the 
new monarchies of Europe, but they were always dangerous, and 
in the case of the Papacy — unsupported by any large or reliable 
army — nearly fatal. Old privileges were abolished or confirmed 
in return for heavy payment. Forgotten feudal claims of the 
Popes were revived and suddenly enforced. Confiscations were 
made on the pretext of escheat. The result was that dispossessed 
or offended nobles took to the countryside and became bandits. 
They terrorised the March of Ancona, and swept across the 
Campagna in defiance of civilisation. Gregory sent his son 
Giacomo and Cardinal Sforza against the banditti, but without 
success. When the banditti were pressed by the papal forces they 
crossed the border of some neighbouring State where their griev- 
ances met with sympathy from others who had shared them. 
For Gregory had offended all his neighbours by his impolitic 
extortions. Even Cosimo de' Medici turned against him, and 
compelled him to pardon the most dangerous of all the bandits, 
a Piccolomini who had paralysed Gregory's action by threatening 
the life of Giacomo. It took a stronger man than Gregory to 
combat the wind which he had sown. His successor, Sixtus V., 
dealt with the bandit problem in the drastic and competent way 
in which he faced all the problems of his short and brilliant 
pontificate (1585-1590). He conciliated the neighbour States by 
removing the burdens which Gregory had placed on them, and 
then, having cut off their retreat, he faced the bandits boldly. 
In two years he freed Italy from the curse of outlawry. He 
executed the most awe-inspiring of the robber chiefs and all who 
had helped them. He spread terror in the papal cities by his 
22 



338 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

severity in the maintenance of order. He condemned four youths 
to death for carrying arms and another for resisting the police. 
People were horrified at his measures and gratified by the results. 
"This security is of great good to the peaceful public," said an 
eye-witness. 

The early life of Sixtus V. was a vigil, from which he came 
forth prepared for action. All his life he had been conscious of 
the call of God: in his peasant-childhood it had led him to 
become a Franciscan; as a young man it had made him the 
popular preacher of Rome, and had involved him in trouble with 
the Inquisition through mysterious and disquieting experiences 
in the pulpit. As he believed in himself, so others believed in 
him : he won over the Chief of the Holy Office, and he gained 
the confidence of Pius V. He became General of the Franciscans, 
Cardinal di Montalto, and Bishop of Fermo. Towards Gregory 
XIII. he had a deep antipathy, and during his predecessor's pon- 
tificate he stayed in his See, brooding, writing, and thinking 
deeply. When he became Pope at the age of sixty-four he lost 
no time in putting thought into action. There was nothing 
tentative about his policy, as his dealings with the bandits 
proved. The difficulty was that it was expensive, and Sixtus 
was unwilling to adopt the unpopular financial measures of his 
predecessor. Instead of these he instituted the system of Monti, 
or public loans, which were to be the basis of papal finance for 
many years to come. These funds, supplemented by others de- 
rived from the sale of offices and from very heavy taxation, 
gave Sixtus a large revenue, but economics was not his strong 
point ; they failed to pass the standard of criticism even of his 
contemporaries, who drew attention to the absurd gold hoard 
which it was his pride to heap up in St. Angelo, while the Monti 
loans crippled him by their weight. 

The main objects for which Sixtus wanted money were the 
wars against the Turks and the heretics. Round these two 
objects his politics turned. Spain was necessary to both, and 
therefore Sixtus was careful not to offend Philip, although he 
was just as much afraid of Spanish influence in Italy as his pre- 
decessors had been. France was likely to be the bone of contention, 
for Philip of Spain had everything to gain by prolonging the Wars 
of Religion in France, whereas Sixtus knew that a strong and united 
France was necessary to curb the power of Spain. A further and 
more fantastic aim which Sixtus had in view, and which also en- 
dangered his relations with Philip, was the conversion of Eliza- 
beth. He had conceived an admiration for the indomitable 
woman, so like himself in her attitude to her enemies, of which he 



THE COUNTEK-KEFOKMATION 339 

was the chief. To restore England to Catholicism by transforming 
Elizabeth into a " second Countess Matilda," to whom he should 
play Hildebrand, was a project which Elizabeth would have de- 
lighted to play up to, but it was based on a complete misconcep- 
tion of her character. In the end Sixtus found out his mistake, 
and, after playing off the English designs of France against Philip's 
schemes of conquest, he finally supported the Spanish Armada 
with all his might. But he was never very sanguine about 
Philip's enterprise : he alternately scolded him for procrastina- 
tion and encouraged him with sums of money. The death of 
Mary Queen of Scots was Elizabeth's challenge to the Pope, and 
the Armada was the answer. When the Armada fell to pieces, 
Sixtus shared the defeat of an ally whom he despised and feared 
by an enemy whom he respected and knew to be the stronger. 

Towards the struggle in France Sixtus was very guarded. At 
first he seemed inclined to follow Philip in his support of the 
Guises, and in 1585 he declared Henry of Navarre and Conde to 
be excluded from the succession as heretics. The Italian States 
— and particularly Venice — were anxious to reconcile Sixtus with 
the King of Navarre, because Henry was anti-Spanish, and his 
succession to the throne would put an end to Philip's interference 
in French politics. But the revolt of Paris and the murder of 
Cardinal Guise pledged Sixtus more deeply to the League. It 
was not until the battle of Ivry in 1590 gave the victory to Henry, 
who, at the same time, showed an inclination to be converted, 
that Sixtus reversed his policy. At the time of his death, he was 
allied to Henry of Navarre, to the consternation of Philip and 
the rejoicing of the Italian States, who saw in his French policy 
a patriotic step towards emancipation from Spanish leadership. 
Many Popes since Clement VII. had been accused of being 
"Spanish chaplains," and the Hapsburg bonds were hard to 
break. Even Sixtus dared not quarrel with Philip or with his 
German cousins. He had to preserve a rigid neutrality in 
Poland, where the Archduke Maximilian was at war with Sigis- 
mund of Sweden. In his relations to the Emperor Rudolf II. he 
was less cautious, and the support which he gave to the League 
nearly produced serious trouble. 

It was in Italian affairs that Sixtus was seen at his best. In 
spite of Philip, he clung to his alliance with Venice as a bulwark 
against the East. He sustained the friendship with Florence 
which Pius V. had made. Fortified by these two powerful 
allies, he took up the causes of smaller Italian States ; at the 
risk of offending France, he supported the Duke of Savoy in his 
seizure of Saluzzo. In the Papal States he embarked on admirable 



340 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

improvement schemes. He undertook the irrigation of the 
marshes at great expense, and he planted mulberry trees for the 
encouragement of the silk industry. He opened out the port of 
Ancona, and he built galleys to protect the Mediterranean coast. 
Under Sixtus modern Rome began to look like itself. He laid 
out the upper part of the city, and joined it to the lower. He 
gave it an improved water supply by restoring the aqueducts. 
He added the dome to St. Peter's, as a fitting symbol of the 
glory of the restored Papacy, and he set up the obelisk in the 
Piazza as a tribute to the triumph of Christendom over Pagan- 
ism. He reformed the constitution of the Curia by the intro- 
duction of the " Congregation " system, by which he divided the 
Cardinals into committees for dealing with special purposes, 
such as the Inquisition, the Segnatura, and the Vatican press. 
He fixed the number of the Cardinals at seventy, and he was 
careful in his choice of candidates. 

Sixtus was the first Pope who failed to appreciate the Jesuits. 
Like Philip, he found his own prerogative menaced by a corpora- 
tion which was in itself so autocratic. For the first time we find 
the mechanical obedience of the Jesuits indicated as a source 
of danger to society. Sixtus wanted to reform their constitu- 
tion, and Cardinal Caraffa was appointed to conduct the pre- 
liminaries. But Caraffa was the friend of the Order, and nothing 
definite was done before the Pope's death. The Jesuits have 
been accused of saying and thinking many things which the 
average criminal would disavow. Their influence has been de- 
tected in crimes of the period with which they had nothing to do, 
and their more dangerous doctrines have been misstated in con- 
nection with events for which they were in no way responsible. 
But it is certainly true that so great an influence as theirs could 
hardly have been used without abuse, and that in the time of 
Sixtus, Jesuit politics were of a subterranean and explosive 
character. In an age which was permeated by the theory of the 
Divine Right of Kings, the Jesuits were inclined to preach the 
sovereignty of the people. They found that strong monarchies 
were inherently anti-papal, and in the attempt to exalt the Pope 
they were prepared to lower the standards of monarchy. Their 
own differences with Philip II. were an added impulse in this 
direction. Mariana's famous book, in which he defends the 
madman who assassinated Henry III., caused a good deal of 
discussion, and the Jesuits were afterwards accused, on its 
account, of favouring tyrannicide. At the time, however, 
Mariana's views were sanctioned by the Sorbonne and supported 
by the legate. Even Philip found it convenient at the moment 



THE COUNTEK-KEFOKMATION 341 

to accept them, for, as a good Catholic, it was to his advantage 
to do so. Sixtus himself was much more in sympathy with the 
rival theory held by the national party in France, who wanted 
a strong King, a united France, and the exclusion of Spanish 
influence. The Catholics of this party only waited for Henry 
IV. to become a Catholic, which the Politiques were not slow to 
arrange, and the result was that the accession of Henry led di- 
rectly to a persecution of the Jesuits. 

The death of Sixtus, in 1590, was welcomed by the Romans 
in spite of the benefits which he had bestowed on them, for 
Rome was still Rome, and it never could forgive the ruler who 
gave it order. There is a completeness about his pontificate 
which is rare in the annals of the Papacy ; and it was due, it 
seems, more to his powers of direction than to his creative facul- 
ties. The three Popes who succeeded him died before they left 
their mark on the world. Urban VII. reigned only twelve days. 
Gregory XIV. was an ethereal character who was too simple 
and sincere to fathom the intrigues of the Curia. During his 
ten months' pontificate he carried on a direct and effective 
policy in support of the League. He and his successor, Innocent 
IX., were elected from among a selection of Cardinals to whom 
Philip II. had pledged his support. With the accession of 
Clement VIII. (1592-1605) another decisive epoch begins. 

Clement VIII. was the youngest of four excellent middle- 
class brothers called Aldobrandini, and he had all the energy 
and resource of a man who had had his way to make in the 
world. Sixtus V. had been drawn to him by his talents and his 
piety, and had made him a Cardinal. As Pope, he was dis- 
tinguished, in an age of high standards, for his exemplary life. 
Every day he confessed himself, and every day he shared his 
simple dinner with twelve poor men. The first problem which 
confronted him was the French succession question. He had 
meant to conciliate both parties while he awaited developments, 
but he found himself pledged by his legate to the Catholic 
League party. It was not until July, 1593, that Henry IV. 
decided that "Paris vaut bien une messe," and seized an 
absolution with a crown from the Catholics in France. Clement's 
formal act of absolution two years later, in front of St. Peter's, 
was the recognition of a fait accompli. It meant for the 
Papacy the freedom from Spanish control for which so many 
Popes had waited. France had at last put itself into the 
hands of the strong Bourbon King who knew how to heal her 
wounds, and who could face the Hapsburgs again in the 
might which the Valois had lost. Once more the Pyrenees 



342 A SHOKT HISTOBY OF THE PAPACY 

would hold the balance which the Popes had so long struggled 
to restore. 

The question of Ferrara gave Henry IV. an opportunity to 
prove his untried loyalty to the Papacy at the expense of the 
traditional friendship between France and the House of Este. 
Troubles had been looming in Ferrara ever since it became clear 
that Duke Alfonso II. would die without an heir. As a fief of 
the Church it would escheat to the Pope, and Pius V. had made 
this inevitable by a Bull in which he made it illegal for a Pope 
to grant reinvestment in cases of probable escheat. Alfonso II. 
had secretly left his duchy to his kinsman Cesare, who promptly 
took possession when he died in 1597. The situation was very 
complicated because the jealousy of Alfonso had kept Cesare a 
stranger to the court during his lifetime, and the Este traditions 
were associated with Alfonso's brilliant sister Lucrezia, of whom 
Ferrara was justly proud. Lucrezia hated the unfortunate heir, 
and conspired against him with Clement's nephew, Cardinal 
Aldobrandini, to whom she left all that was hers to leave of 
the Este heritage. The Italian States supported Cesare and his 
rights against the Pope, but they were not prepared to fight for 
him, and Henry IV., to whom he appealed, was at the moment 
too new a Catholic to venture to oppose Clement. Henry had 
his reward, for Clement called him a second Charlemagne, and 
the Pope's support was necessary to nim in his struggle with 
Philip. But the fortunes of Ferrara were betrayed into the 
hands of the Pope, and the court of Ferrara, which had been 
the glory of Italy and the pride of Tasso, sank into oblivion at 
Modena, to which it was transferred. Clement's excommunica- 
tion brought Cesare to his feet, and Ferrara became a papal city 
with a strong new fortress on the site of the Este palace. 

A schism in the Jesuit camp brought the Order into greater 
prominence than ever in the early days of Clement VIII. The 
young Neapolitan, General Aquaviva, of whom it was said that 
" one must love him if one only looks at him," had come into 
opposition with the Spanish branch of the Order. Clement 
ordered a General Congregation, and Aquaviva was triumphantly 
vindicated, but the opposition was taken up by Philip II. and 
by the Dominicans, and a new phase of the free-will controversy 
was the outcome. Aquaviva and his party had stood for a 
wider "Rule of Studies" and a freer field of theological discus- 
sion than the Spanish party were willing to concede. Some 
critical comments by the Jesuit theologian Molina on the 
theology of St. Thomas Aquinas called forth the Dominican 
counterblast. As the theory of the sovereignty of the people 



THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 343 

had got the Jesuits into trouble in France, so their liberal 
theology brought them opposition in Spain. It was a curious 
and significant phase in Jesuit history that, while they were 
being driven out of France for their Spanish sympathies, they 
were being attacked by the monarchical party in Spain. The 
explanation lies in the fact that they were better Churchmen 
than politicians, or, as Macaulay puts it, " Inflexible in nothing 
but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to 
appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of 
freedom". Clement, who had listened to the opposition in 
Spain, supported the Jesuits in France. Henry IV. made his 
peace with them, recalled them in 1600, and took the Jesuit 
Cotton for his confessor. The influence of Clement was just 
then at its height. In 1598 he had healed the breach between 
France and Spain by arranging the peace of Vervins. The 
balance was now so true that there was no need to rock the 
scales. 

The last phase of Clement's policy was marked by the rivalry 
between Cardinal Farnese, who was leader of the opposition in 
the Spanish interest, and Cardinal Aldobrandini, Clement's tal- 
ented nephew, who was the guardian of the French alliance. 
Clement had not carried on the "constitutional" government of 
Sixtus by means of the Congregations. He preferred a more 
autocratic method, and as long as he ruled in person all went 
well. But the growing influence of the Cardinal-nephew brought 
a revival of French intervention in Italian affairs and the con- 
sequent hostility of the Spanish circle. The administrative 
aspect of Clement's pontificate has been made notorious by two 
of the world's causes celebres — the execution of Beatrice .Cenci 
and the burning of the scientist Bruno. The cause of Beatrice, 
as Shelley pleads it, rests on the provocation for her crime, 
which seems to have been beyond dispute. The case against 
the Papacy is the alleged profit which it derived from her 
father's evil deeds. It is to be feared that miscarriages of moral 
justice stain the records of papal history no less than those of 
contemporary England or France. The victims, of whom Beatrice 
and Pompilia are the poetic types, paid the price of the crude 
judicial theory which held it to be more important to punish 
evil than to do justice to the evildoer. The death of Bruno 
belongs to another ethical category. It is true that he died as 
a martyr to scientific truth, but he had not lived in a manner 
worthy of his mission, and there was some justification for his 
condemnation by the Inquisition as an example of the evil 
moral effects of " heresy". 



344 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

By the death of Clement VIII. the triumph of the Counter- 
Reformation was established. When historians have set forth 
the causes of the victory and traced the steps by which it was 
achieved, the recovering power of Catholicism remains to 
astonish the world. It is true that the Protestant princes were 
often degenerate, like Henry IV., or half-hearted, like Elizabeth. 
It is also true that the " local militia " of Protestantism was no 
match for the trained " foreign service army " of the Jesuits. 
But Catholicism had at least as great an advantage in the 
personal character of the Counter- Reformation Popes. Politics 
more often reflect the worst than the best of the men who make 
them, and it is not easy to give personal holiness its due on the 
crowded historical canvas of the sixteenth century Papacy. 
But the closer we look into the lives of the men who led the 
Catholic faith to victory, the more profoundly we give them 
our homage. History cannot linger in the byways of biography, 
but the story of the great recovery of Catholicism is written 
more clearly than elsewhere in the zeal of Paul IV., the good 
deeds of Pius V. and Clement VIII., and the moral energy of 
Sixtus V. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

MACAULAY ascribes the success of the Catholics chiefly 
to the faculty possessed by Catholicism of using and 
directing enthusiasm. The supreme instance of this 
is the work of the Jesuits in reclaiming Germany. They were 
led and supported by Catholic princes whom they had taught 
and rilled with the divine fire. Since 1587 Sigismund III. had 
restored Poland to Catholicism, armed with the weapon of royal 
patronage, and strengthened with papal subsidies. He might 
have been King of Denmark if he had been a less uncom- 
promising Catholic. Meanwhile, the Jesuit colleges turned 
Poland into a nursery garden of the Catholic faith in which 
strong young plants were nurtured for the neighbouring German 
States. In Germany proper the ecclesiastical princes led the 
way to restoration by banishing the Protestants from their 
territories, as they claimed to be allowed to do by the Religious 
Peace. In 1597 Ferdinand II. took a solemn oath before the 
shrine of Loretto to root out the Protestants from his duchies of 
Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. His cousin, the Emperor Rudolf 
II., followed his example in Austria and Bohemia. Maximilian 
of Bavaria, with the help of the great Jesuit College at Ingolstadt, 
played the part of :c a fervent missionary wielding the powers of 
a prince ". With France in the strong hands of Henry IV., whose 
religion was his policy, and Spain, Catholic as ever, under Philip 
III., but humbled a little by the triumph of the Jesuits, Paul V. 
(1605-1621) might be expected to pitch his prerogatives high. 

Paul's pretensions were inclined to exceed his grasp, and a 
series of successful disputes at the beginning of his reign had not 
taught him to discard his narrow and pedantic autocracy. He 
had got the better of the Neapolitan government in a judicial 
dispute, of the Knights of Malta and of Savoy in investiture 
quarrels, and of Lucca and Genoa on questions of ecclesiastical 
rights. A struggle with Venice taught him to walk more warily. 
There was a strong party growing up in Venice — the oldest and 
proudest of city States — which, under the leadership of Sarpi, set 

345 



346 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

itself to oppose the new trend of Catholic opinion, and especially 
the revived power of the Pope, as it was taught and enforced by 
the Jesuits. Venice had several grievances against the Papacy, 
and Paul's attempt to claim judicial rights over two priests was 
made a test case. In a rash moment Paul excommunicated the 
Signoria, and threatened the city with the Interdict. Venice 
remained coolly indifferent, and retorted by expelling the Jesuits. 
The Pope appealed to Spain, and Venice to France, and the affair 
ended in a compromise, which in relation to his claims amounted 
to a papal defeat. The priests were handed over to Paul, and 
Venice was absolved in secret, but the city had safeguarded its 
pride throughout, and refused to receive back the Jesuits or to 
repeal the laws which had caused offence. The sting lay in the 
fact that Venice had successfully braved the Interdict, which was 
never again used. 

Europe was moving steadily on towards the Thirty Years' 
War, which was " the last of the Crusades ". As far as the 
trouble was religious, it turned on points which were left over 
from the Religious Peace of 1555. The Protestants were obliged 
to make a stand against the aggressive policy of the Catholics, 
who interpreted all the disputed clauses of the Peace in their 
own favour. But the condition of Protestantism was very unlike 
that of the Catholic world, for while " the whole zeal of the 
Catholics was directed against the Protestants, almost the whole 
zeal of the Protestants was directed against each other " (Mac- 
aulay). Lutheranism alone had any status in Germany, and no 
Lutheran had any desire to struggle for toleration for a Calvinist. 
The Protestant union of 1608, which Christian of Anhalt organ- 
ised under the leadership of the Elector Frederick, was a con- 
federacy formed by the Calvinists in self-defence, and the 
Lutheran princes held aloof from it. On the other hand, 
Maximilian of Bavaria's Catholic League of 1609 had behind it 
the full force of the Catholic reaction. Maximilian devoted to it 
his wonderful powers of leadership and his large resources ; he 
also gave it a brilliant Catholic general in the Belgian Tilly. The 
Emperor and Ferdinand of Styria joined it, and Paul V. gave it 
his keenest support. Philip III. did it good service by keeping 
James I. of England out of the struggle as long as possible by 
the bait of the Spanish match. Rudolf's troubles in Austria and 
Bohemia, and the revolt of Cleres, gave the Protestants a good 
start, but when Ferdinand II. came into his own in 1617 as ruler 
of all the Hapsburg territories and Emperor-elect, the Catholic 
cause was certain to go forward. The revolt of Bohemia was the 
outcome of his militant Catholicism ; it formed the prelude of 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 347 

" the most desolating of modern wars " (1618-1648). Paul V. 
did his best to follow the gleam of religion among the storm- 
clouds of conflicting policies. The battle of the White Mountain, 
which gave Bohemia to Catholicism and to Ferdinand, was a 
Catholic even more than a Hapsburg victory, after which the 
" Winter King " Frederick melted away as the Jesuits had fore- 
told. Paul was fortunate enough to die at the full tide of Catho- 
lic success, surrounded in Rome by the streets and squares and 
gardens which he had planned on the massive and grandiose 
scale which was the mirror of his mind. His greatest pride was 
the pretentious but effective facade of St. Peter's which filled his 
contemporaries with joy, and seemed to the seventeenth century 
aesthetes an improvement on the designs of Bramante and 
Michelangelo. 

Paul's successor was Gregory XV. — an old and delicate man, 
who left the government chiefly in the hands of his energetic young 
nephew, Ludovico Ludovisio. His pontificate saw the continued 
success of the Catholic League in Austria and the Empire, and 
the energetic reclamation of Bohemia by the Jesuits under 
Carlo Caraffa. In 1623 the Palatine electorate was given to 
Maximilian of Bavaria, whose arms had wrested it from 
Frederick. This gave the Catholics a majority of five to two 
among the electors, which was a sign of the times. In France 
a steady decline of Protestantism had set in, as a result of 
internal dissension, co-operating with the vigorous policy of 
Richelieu which was beginning to make itself felt. On the 
whole the person who had least cause to rejoice in the Catholic 
successes was the man who had sacrificed most to bring them 
about. "Ferdinand II. 's allies served him so well that they 
threw him into the shade" (Acton). Tilly's successes were the 
successes of Bavaria, and Maximilian was becoming a dangerous 
friend. So Ferdinand hired a general of his own, and commis- 
sioned Wallenstein to make the Austrian army. 

Meanwhile the Hapsburg fortunes in Italy had brought them 
up against their Bourbon rivals. In order to establish communi- 
cations between Spanish Milan and Austrian Switzerland, Philip 
took possession of the Alpine passes in the Valtelline. This 
was regarded as an act of aggression by their neighbours, who 
appealed to their natural protector, France. Both sides referred 
the matter to the Pope, and asked him to garrison the Alpine 
fortresses with his own troops while the question was being 
decided. After some hesitation, Gregory accepted the dangerous 
compliment, and the independence of Valtelline was admitted 
by every one. At that point Gregory died. His successor, Urban 



348 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

VIII., was not trusted as his predecessor had been. The papal 
garrison gradually became Spanish ; it was fed from Milan and 
paid by Spain. In 1624, France and Venice drove it out of the 
fortresses, and restored them to the Grisons peasants of the 
valleys below. Urban shrank back into neutrality, and in 
1626 arranged the peace of Monzon, which gave the Valtelline 
nominally to the Grisons and virtually to Spain. France, who had 
her own ends to serve, was prevailed upon by Urban to begin 
her career of selfishness by the sacrifice of the small allies who 
had trusted her. Urban played into the hands of Richelieu, 
who wanted peace with Spain in order to deal with the Huguenots, 
and so sacrificed Italy to the ambition of France. 

Urban VIII. (1623-1644) had risen by his wits as Matteo 
Barberini, and made his name on a successful embassy to 
France. He was elected by French influence, and he never 
forgot that he was Pope in the interests of France. Nor did he 
allow France to forget it, as the affairs of Mantua were soon to 
show. The heir of Mantua was a Frenchman, Charles, Due de 
Nevers-Rethel, but he had a possible rival in a German girl 
who belonged to the house of Hapsburg. Urban, who was 
radically anti-Hapsburg, connived at a secret marriage between 
the rivals, gave Charles a dispensation in order to make it legal, 
and appealed to France to support his action against the inevit- 
able opposition of Spain and Austria. Richelieu was preoccupied 
at that moment against the Huguenots, but after the siege of 
Rochelle Louis XIII. came readily enough into the fray. The 
humiliation of Ferdinand II. was the next move in Richelieu's 
game for the aggrandisement of France. But the affair of 
Mantua only showed how strong Ferdinand had grown since the 
White Mountain. A French success against the Spanish forces 
besieging Casale was more than redeemed by Wallenstein's 
victory against Mantua itself. Ferdinand had declared that he 
meant " to show the Italians that there is still an Emperor, and 
that he will call them to account". By 1630, Wallenstein was 
master of Mantua, Venice was trembling at his approach, 
and Rome anticipated another sack. Ferdinand wanted to be 
crowned at Bologna, but Urban made excuses and looked 
confidently to the designs of Richelieu to deliver him. 

In 1629, a split in the Catholic camp made it possible for 
Richelieu to weave the web round Ferdinand which was to be 
his ruin. Maximilian of Bavaria placed himself at the head of 
a party in opposition to the so-called military tyranny of Wallen- 
stein. The action of the Jesuits in taking over the monastic 
property which was recovered from the Protestants aggravated 






THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 349 

the antagonism, and at the Diet of Ratisbon in 1630 it was 
expressed in the refusal of the Catholic princes to sanction the 
election of Ferdinand's son as King of the Romans. Ferdinand 
fell into the trap. He sacrificed Wallenstein, and with Wallen- 
stein all that he had gained in Italy. At that moment a new 
and more formidable champion of Protestantism came victorious 
into Germany. The successes of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden 
brought him at last to the Italian border, and his death in 1632 
saved Urban from the worst dilemma of his life. Behind 
Gustavus Adolphus were the schemes of Richelieu, who — 
Catholic and Cardinal as he was — did not scruple to enlist 
Protestantism in the cause of France. Behind Richelieu, 
screened by false goodwill to Ferdinand and infinitesimal 
subsidies to the Catholic arms, Urban VIII. concealed his an- 
tipathy to the most diligent of Catholics, and pulled the wires 
which were working the downfall of the Papacy. 

After the death of Gustavus Adolphus, the last phase of the 
Thirty Years' War, and the definite intervention of France, 
abstracted the religious element out of the struggle, and gave 
Urban a plausible pretext for neutrality. In the quarrels of one 
Catholic power against another — the dynastic rivalries of Haps- 
burg against Bourbon — the Pope could claim that he had no 
concern. As long as Ferdinand was facing the consequences of 
the Edict of Restitution, which his Catholic zeal had dictated, 
and as long as the opposition was headed by the chief of heretics, 
it was necessary for Urban to act the part of head of Catholicism. 
After his sorrowful " Te Deum " for the Imperial victory of 
Nordlingen in 1634, he gave up the pretence, and filled with 
bitterness the Catholic soul of Ferdinand. The price which the 
Papacy paid for the neutrality of Urban came to light at the 
Peace of Westphalia. The Catholic assembly at Minister, which 
discussed the preliminaries of peace, paid no attention to the 
demands of the Pope, and the legate, Chigi, who presided, could 
only influence it by obstruction. The real maker of the peace 
was Christina of Sweden — at that time the most modern of 
Protestant queens, and later the most broad-minded of 
Catholic converts. She presided over the Protestant assembly 
which framed the peace almost as it was adopted by both sides 
at Westphalia in 1648. In politics, the peace roughly defined 
the modern map of Europe ; in religion, it wisely drew the line 
where it was already traced. The greatest loser was the Pope, 
not only through the many articles which were unfavourable to 
the rights of the Papacy, but still more through the loss of in- 
fluence which was never regained. 



350 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

And yet, Urban, who had lost so much, claimed to be a 
Hildebrand, and used the most extravagant language about his 
prerogatives. His disastrous enterprise against Parma was 
really a war of etiquette. Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma, 
claimed to be the head of the Italian nobility, and supported his 
claim with an ostentatious arrogance which offended Urban's 
relations, and provoked the anger of Urban himself. The Pope 
and the Barberini opened a " money market war " on the Farnesi 
by buying up the " Monti " of Parma, which they had previously 
cheapened by a papal warrant forbidding the export of grain 
from Parmese Castro. This gave an economic pretext for the 
seizure of Castro by papal arms, and the excommunication of 
Odoardo. The three neighbour states of Middle Italy took up 
the cause of Parma, and the " Four Dukes " — Parma, Tuscany, 
Modena, and Venice — made an entirely successful war on the 
Barberini. By negotiating at the wrong moment the Farnesi 
lost a chance of crushing the Pope, and the peace of Venice left 
things as they were before the war. But the immense expense 
of the campaign crippled the papal States for years to come. 
Nor was the war of the Barberini, as it was called, the only 
cause of economic trouble. Urban was the most extravagant 
of Popes. He had a passion for building expensive and unneces- 
sary fortifications, some of which, like the Bologna Fort Urbano, 
were intended rather to impress the countryside than to defend 
it. The escheat of Urbino, on the death of the last of the Delia 
Rovere, was a new source of revenue, but it was swallowed up in 
the ocean of debt which accumulated from the Monti. Added 
to this, the new nepotism was as large a financial drain as the 
old. Since Bulls now prevented the alienation of Church lands, 
the relations of the Popes were compensated for the dignities 
which might once have been theirs by a convention which 
allotted to them the sums annually left over from the papal 
revenue. In this way the new families who ruled Rome rose to 
power through money. The Peretti, the Aldobrandini, and the 
Borghesi were all parvenus of the early seventeenth century, and 
now the Barberini joined the throng, richest and most influential 
of all. Urban himself was shocked when he discovered how 
much his relations cost him, and in 1640 a financial inquiry re- 
vealed the extent of the evil. Before he died, in 1644, the ex- 
haustion of his credit led him to make the inglorious peace 
which ended the disastrous Castro war. 

The ideal of Urban was to rule as a temporal prince in the 
interests of France. It was not the ideal of the Catholic revival, 
with which he had little in common, and in breaking away from 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY 351 

it he brought the Papacy to an end as a European power. An 
amateur soldier and a minor poet, of boundless conceit and con- 
tradictory habit of mind, Urban gives the impression of a second- 
rate personality dealing with great forces which he can neither 
appreciate nor control. He posed literally as a man of iron : he 
wished to have a statue forged in iron : he made an armoury at 
Tivoli, and an arsenal in the Vatican vaults. He covered St. 
Angelo with an iron breastwork. His table was strewn with 
military plans interspersed with books of modern poetry. In 
reality he was a shadow man, playing with the toys of power. 
The protest of his successor against the formal publication of 
the Peace of Westphalia announced to the world his failure. 
For the Peace put the clock back to 1624, taking the first year of 
Urban's pontificate as the standard measure by which the terri- 
tory of Europe was apportioned to the two religions. It is true 
that the Peace of Westphalia marked the triumph of Catholicism 
over Protestantism, and that it left the Church of Rome " victori- 
ous and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria, 
Poland, and Hungary ". But the victory had been won in the 
fifty years before Urban VIII. began to reign, and the last twenty 
years had been years of stagnation implying decline. 

The great finale, which ends the Wars of Religion, brings us 
to a new phase in the history of the Papacy in which the Popes 
are at war with movements within the Catholic borders. The 
rise of the Jansenists, the first of these, was a legacy from the 
theological disputes of the Council of Trent. Jansen and his 
friend, Du Verger, two students of Louvain, adopted the strict 
Augustinian view of the doctrine of Grace, as opposed to the 
wide Jesuit theory which Bellarmine had formulated, and the 
Council adopted. Jansen, as Bishop of Ypres, and Du Verger, as 
Abbot of St. Cyran, gathered round them a group of disciples, 
among whom the leaders were the influential Arnauld family. 
The holiness of St. Cyran made him a power in Paris, and the 
social circle of the Arnaulds widened into a school of thought 
which had its centre at Port Royal. Jansen's book, " Augus- 
tinus," gave it a formulated creed, and St. Cyran's influence, 
which his imprisonment by Richelieu, and his death in 1643, 
in no way lessened, created a spiritual force. They worked for 
the inner regeneration of Catholicism, and deprecated the em- 
phasis which the Jesuits laid on outward restoration. The deep- 
ening of personal religion, the freedom of the will, and the con- 
sciousness of the love of God, were the sources from which they 
drew. "S'humilier, souffrir, et dependre de Dieu est toute la 
vie chre"tienne ". Le Maitre, the first orator of the Parlement, 



352 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

Arnauld d'Andilly, the intimate friend of Richelieu, and other 
men of influence, joined the unmonastic community of Port Royal 
— half-spiritual, half-literary, and wholly devout — where Racine 
developed his classical perfection, and Pascal unfolded his genius, 
in the atmosphere of mystical Quiet, which afterwards gave them 
a name. The powers of Angelique Arnauld enlisted the influence 
of women, and her brilliant leadership of the nuns of Port Royal 
is one of the glories of Jansenism and of France. 

There was nothing Protestant about Jansenism, except what 
its purity and zeal had in common with the earliest leaders of 
Protestantism and every sincere religious movement. Jansen 
protested against Richelieu's Protestant alliances, and the mind 
of Port Royal, as it is expressed in its publications, is utterly 
Catholic and loyal to tradition. It was indeed an impulse of 
loyalty which led Port Royal to refer certain doctrines, held by 
Jansen in spite of papal condemnation, to Innocent X. Innocent 
was not a theologian, and he tried to avoid dealing with an un- 
congenial problem. But in 1653 he was persuaded to plunge 
in, and the result was his condemnation of the Five Propositions 
in which the Jansenist doctrines were summed up. The man 
who had persuaded him to do it became Pope himself two years 
later, and so was unfortunately pledged against the Jansenists, 
who now denied that the Five Propositions were Jansenist at all. 
When Alexander VII. upheld them as being contained in Jan- 
sen's book, the Jansenists retaliated by denying his right to say 
so. In other words, they denied the Pope's authority ex cathe- 
dra to determine questions of fact. Alexander condemned them 
again, and Louis tried to enforce their submission by requiring 
them to sign formularies drawn up on the model of the Bulls. 
But the Jansenists had become a party, with the strength and 
the faults of a political organisation. They had also, against 
their natural inclination, become heretics, with the courage, the 
pertinacity, and something of the self-righteousness of heresy in 
their attitude to their opponents. Pascal's " Provincial Letters " 
gained for Jansenism " a sweeping victory of human wit " against 
the Jesuits. The system of casuistry was never more unfairly 
represented, and no Jesuit ever combined craft and stupidity as 
ludicrously as Pascal's imaginary opponent, but the "Provincial 
Letters" did their work with a deadly effectiveness. By the 
time that outward peace was patched up by Clement IX. in 1668, 
a large section of the Catholic world was laughing with Pascal 
against the ill-formulated Jesuit theories which he so mercilessly 
ridiculed. 

Irony tells in proportion to its truth, and Pascal — partisan 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 353 

and puritan as he was — knew that he was not fighting in the air. 
The Jesuits were not the splendid army which they had been, 
and their sway was not undisputed. Aquaviva's successors had 
relaxed the discipline which held them together, and. in 1661, 
the Superiors of the Order managed to change the constitution 
by associating a Vicar with the General, who limited his power 
and brought in an element of oligarchy. The blow was directed 
against Goswin Nickel, an unpopular General, who had combined 
misgovernment with discourtesy, but the change reacted upon 
the Order by its tendency to check reform. There were two chief 
ways in which the Jesuits began to forfeit their empire in the 
seventeenth century. The first of these was their submission to 
the mercantile spirit, and the second, their misuse of the most 
delicate of all prerogatives, the direction of conscience. Their 
shortcomings in both directions have been exaggerated, and 
much has been laid to their charge for which they were not ex- 
clusively to blame. But even if their aims have been misunder- 
stood and their failings unfairly caricatured, the Jesuits must be 
judged by their own high standards, and by these they cannot be 
acquitted. They took to merchandise at first as earlier Orders 
had taken to agriculture. But the first abuses came in when 
they began to do business for their relations as unpaid solicitors. 
At the same time they began to bring their possessions into their 
Colleges with them, and to accept presents from rich pupils. 
They held fairs and money-exchanges, and they maintained a 
cloth-market at Macerata and a wine trade in Portugal. 

Side by side with their growing commercialism, their spiritual 
administration deteriorated. Their opponents accused them of 
making the way of transgressors easy, and the burden of sinners 
light. They pointed out the convenient vagueness of the theory 
of Probabilism, and likened its upholders to doctors who put 
pillows under the shoulders of sinners. Their defenders denied 
that the system of casuistry was intended as a code ; it was 
merely an attempt to classify sins in a way which the Pope's 
penal powers made necessary. They pointed to the bold atti- 
tude of the Jesuits to the Grand Monarque, whom they "cha- 
grinait tous les jours" — to the heroism which led them to 
martyrdom in China, and to death in plague-stricken Orleans. 
There is truth in both points of view. History shows that the 
Jesuits were for the most part moral and devoted in their lives ; 
many of them were brave and a few heroic. Undoubtedly they 
were unfortunate in not having a Pascal in their ranks ; they 
were careless and unskilful in self-defence. But there are many 
instances of their " tortuous aberrations of a subtlety subversive 
23 



354 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

of all morality" (Ranke). They were not free from an "obliging 
and accommodating" tendency to extend their authority by 
softening the severity of evangelical Christianity. Bossuet, a 
fairer judge than Pascal, called them in 1663 " des esprits vaine- 
mer subtil . . . des astres errants . . . (qui) confondent le ciel 
et la terre and melent Je'sus-Christ avec Belial". 

The strength of Jansenism and the deterioration of Jesuitism 
— dangerous as both were to the Papacy — were less menacing 
than the third peril of the age which was personified in Louis 
XIV., "the trial and terror of the Holy See," who tried to cover 
his jealousy of the Pope by his zeal as a persecutor. Ever since 
Gerson and d'Ailly had struggled for the claims of nationality at 
the Council of Constance, there had always been a "Gallican 
party" which had coloured the Church in France. Francis I. 
had nearly followed his rival Henry VIII. in his separation from 
Rome, for the Valois, like the Tudors, recognised the inherent 
antagonism between absolutism and Catholicism, which was the 
moral of the Middle Ages. The Valois, as we have noticed, took 
no interest in the Council of Trent, and the Tridentine decrees 
were never confirmed in France. Under the Bourbons, the 
Gallican tendency was still more strongly marked. Richelieu 
and Mazarin frequently opposed papal policy, the Peace of West- 
phalia was arranged in spite of the Pope, and France had more 
than once made and unmade the Popes of the seventeenth 
century. And yet the ascendancy of France had its glories for 
Catholicism. The great Catholic heroes of the seventeenth 
century are Frenchmen, and its saints are the saints of France. 
Port Royal alone, out of favour no less with the Court than with 
the Curia, contributes its severe melancholy to the beauty of the 
picture. If it was true of the doctrines of Jansenism that " elles 
y otent de la religion ce qui nous console; elles y mettent la 
crainte la douleur, la de*sespoir " — France gave back to Catholi- 
cism in St. Francis de Sales the tenderness and warmth which 
Port Royal had taken away. While St. Francis taught men and 
women to "pray by labours of love," St. Vincent de Paul, himself 
a peasant, became "the great missionary of the common people ". 
The new Order of Ursuline nuns took the young girls of France 
into its care, while St. Maur provided a Catholic education for 
the boys of the noblesse. 

Against this we have to set the picture of conventional 
religion as it prevailed at the court of Louis XIV. A better wit 
than Louis made him say "L'e'tat c'est moi," but if he had said 
it, he would certainly have included religion within the scope of 
the epigram. What is more, the French clergy, with Bossuet at 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY 355 

their head, would have agreed with him. They condemned Port 
Royal less for its heresies than for its failure to regard Louis as a 
second Pope. They supported Louis in his persecution of the 
Huguenots, which culminated in the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes in 1685, because freedom of conscience, as far as the 
Edict admitted it, was inconsistent with passive obedience to 
the Crown. The influence of Madame de Maintenon, before and 
after her marriage with the King, and her obvious good sense 
and high principle, established religion as a fashion at the 
inconsistent court of the Grand Monarque. It was an easy kind 
of religion, with which the man of the world, with the help of 
the Jesuits, could keep pace. The motto of it was, "II faut 
s'accommoder a l'humanite'" (D'Aubigny), and its justification is 
expressed by St. Evremond — " Ceux qui n'ont pas assez de 
consideration pour l'autre vie sont conduits au salut par les 
egards et les devoirs de-celle-ci ". The religion of the Court of 
Versailles, supported by the Jesuits, opposed by the Jansenists, 
and upheld by the national pride of the Gallican clergy, was 
foredoomed to opposition from the religion of Rome. It is 
characteristic of the new era, which begins with the close of the 
Wars of Religion, that the movements in France are more 
important to the Papacy than the policy of the Popes. Innocent 
X. (1644-1655) brought the court of Rome into disrepute by his 
domestic troubles, and the financial corruption which was the 
result of them. He was ruled entirely by his rich sister-in-law, 
Donna Olimpia Maidalchino, whose quarrels with her step- 
daughter and other rivals grew into Curial faction- fights. Rumour, 
of course, alloted to Olimpia a more interesting and scandalous 
connection with the Pope than that of domestic tyrant. But the 
truth seems to have been that she had financed him in his youth, 
as the rich woman of the family, and that, finding him a successful 
investment, she meant tolshare the profits. He was elected as 
a harmless nonentity, because " il parlar poco, simulare assai, e 
non far niento " (Venetian envoy). He had no nephews, but his 
government followed the caprices of Donna Olimpia, her rivals, 
and his own favourites. His' policy, as far as he had one, was 
pro-Spanish, and his attack on the Barberini in 1646 was against 
the wishes of Mazarin. Alexander VII. (1655-1667) proved to be 
another nonentity, though better things had been hoped of him. 
He did, however, reform the administration of the Curia by 
reviving and reorganising the Congregations of Cardinals, which 
Sixtus V. had employed, and giving them real administrative 
power in their different departments. 

Alexander had really meant to avoid nepotism, but the 






356 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

corrupt influences which he found among Innocent's courtiers 
tempted him to break his resolution. He therefore sent for 
Flavio Chigi, who became " Cardinal Padrone," and took the 
uncongenial burden of government away from his uncle. The 
institution of the Congregation of State, with the office of Secretary 
of State, had given the Papacy a Prime Minister, and with the 
growth of order and system in the administration, the govern- 
ment became less haphazard, less cosmopolitan, and more 
aristocratic. Offices were given to men of good family in 
accordance with Alexander's curious principle that as kings 
preferred noblemen to wait on them, so a priesthood of gentlemen 
must be ''pleasing to God". With the good offices of Flavio 
Chigi and the Secretary of State to relieve him from his duties, 
Alexander sank into literary ease and cultured leisure. He was 
very proud of the conversion to Catholicism of Christina of 
Sweden, whose master-mind had capitulated to the logic of the 
Jesuits. He disapproved of her unladylike behaviour when, after 
her abdication, she travelled about Europe, rejoicing in her 
emancipation, and flaunting her eccentric temperament before a 
half-admiring and half-scandalised Europe. But Alexander 
welcomed her warmly, and encouraged her to settle down under 
his own eye. Since his benevolence flattered her she complied 
with his desire, and became the centre of a salon-academy, a 
patron of art on a grand scale, and a secret service agent in the 
Catholic interest. 

Alexander was succeeded by his Secretary of State, who, as 
Clement IX. (1667-1670), continued the negative tradition in 
politics of his predecessors. He was a good, kind, and edifying 
person, whom his contemporaries likened to a tree in full 
blossom which bore no fruit. His pontificate is chiefly mem- 
orable for the struggle between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, 
in which he exercised a moderating influence. He met the 
Jansenists half-way by requiring only the minimum of refutation 
of the Five Propositions as a condition for their absolution. But 
Port Royal knew that the victory was theirs, and history proved 
that a stronger force was needed to suppress Jansenism than the 
waning power of the Papacy. For the moment, however, the 
Jansenists were eclipsed by a struggle in which as mystics they 
had no part. The election of Clement X. (1670-1676) was 
followed by the outbreak of troubles with Louis XIV. Clement 
leaned towards Spain in his European policy, and Louis therefore 
encroached on the rights of the Papacy in France. In his 
attempt to extend the rights of R6*gales beyond the territories 
which belonged to the Crown he challenged Clement to a contest 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY 357 

which had long been imminent. He followed this up by further 
attacks on monastic orders, on clerical immunities, and on 
donations to Rome. Two Bishops with Jansenist leanings, who 
were opposed to the Jesuit influence at court, appealed to the 
Pope, and in so doing made the quarrel constitutional. 

The accession of Innocent XL (1676-1689) was unfortunate 
for Louis, for he now had to meet an opponent who was too good 
for him. Innocent followed up Clement's ineffectual protest with 
three strong admonitions to Louis, which drew down on him the 
wrath of France, and brought Louis to his climax. In 1682, he 
summoned the clergy to St. Germain, and after long discussions 
a declaration of Four Articles was drawn up, to which the 
assembly was required to subscribe. The Four Articles were an 
epitome of Gallicanism. They affirm (1) that sovereigns are 
not subject to the Pope in temporal things ; (2) that a General 
Council is superior to a Pope ; (3) that the power of the Pope is 
subject to the regulations of a Council, and that the Pope cannot 
decide anything contrary to the rules and constitutions of the 
Gallican Church; (4) that decisions of the Papacy are not 
irrevocable. 

No Pope Jwho was conscious of his responsibilities towards 
Catholic unity could let such a declaration stand. Innocent 
condemned it in a Bull, and refused to ratify the appointment of 
thirty Bishops who were responsible for framing it. The situation 
was very like the troubles with England under Henry VIII. , 
except that Louis wanted nothing from the Pope and so could 
afford to wait, whereas Henry in his urgency to obtain the 
divorce was obliged to push on to extremes. Louis was careful 
to temporise and keep on the right side of the law, and thirty 
French Sees remained unshepherded. This was the moment 
which he chose for his persecutions of the Huguenots, which were 
intended to prove his orthodoxy to French Catholics who might 
have qualms about it. The eloquence of Bossuet, the winning 
powers of the Jesuits, the loneliness of emigration, and the 
cruelty of the "Dragonades" were the weapons by which Louis 
tried, and tried in vain, to stamp out the harmless Huguenots 
whose industrious existence was an offence to his religious and 
to his monarchical pride. Innocent's magnificent protest against 
the un-Christlike " conversion by armed apostles " is the glory of 
the Papacy. 

Fresh bitterness was added to the quarrel by the overbearing 
behaviour of the French Ambassador, who appeared in Rome in 
1687 with an armed retinue, and offended the papal court by his 
arrogant hostility. Innocent's fearless and calm determination 



.- 



358 A SHOBT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

to "walk in the name of the Lord" irritated Louis into further 
aggression. He appealed to a General Council, attacked Avignon, 
which was still papal property — imprisoned a nuncio, and 
threatened to create a patriarchate of France. Innocent re- 
mained unmoved, for he knew that the day of reckoning was 
at hand. Louis had aroused the antagonism of Europe, and in 
1687 he was threatened by a combination of his enemies in the 
League of Augsburg. The Papacy gave its secret support to 
the League, and found itself once more in alliance with Pro- 
testantism against a Catholic power. It was not without some 
justification that the Gallican party called Innocent the Protest- 
ant Pope. It was reserved for another Innocent, of a more 
accommodating disposition, to receive the submission of France. 
The war with the League of Augsburg and the influence of 
Madame de Maintenon combined to bring Louis to his senses : he 
had learnt the impolicy of alienating two large sections of his sub- 
jects at once — the Protestants and the Jansenists — by his cruelty 
and severity ; the Catholics by his insults to the Papacy ; and 
both sides by his alliance with the Turks. In 1697 Innocent XII. 
satisfied himself by an apology in which the Gallican Bishops 
assured him of their "inexpressible grief" at the Declaration of 
1682. Louis privately withdrew the four resolutions, which had 
become the law of the land, but he afterwards swore to their 
validity in a less chastened moment. He was worsted, but not 
humbled. 

Innocent XL was a man of whom even his enemies found it 
hard to speak evil. He was strong enough to make many 
enemies, and honourable enough to silence them. His reforms 
were far-reaching and determined, especially in respect to finance 
and nepotism. At the beginning of his pontificate the Papacy 
was threatened with bankruptcy, for corruption and impolicy had 
combined to raise the expenditure above the revenue. By a 
careful reform of the whole financial system he managed to re- 
store the revenue, and by reducing the interest on the Monti, in 
spite of protests, he gave it a sound economic basis. But he 
realised that he must go deeper still for a radical cure. He 
entirely gave up nepotism, and kept the nephew whom he loved 
at a distance from Pome. In spite of his financial difficulties, 
Innocent gave large sums to Austria for the wars against the 
Turks, who had once more pressed forward and laid siege to 
Vienna. A man like Innocent was bound to be misunderstood 
by his contemporaries, and it is extraordinary that he was not 
worse calumniated. As it was, his financial reforms were regarded 
as parsimony, his austerity as inhumanity, and his gentleness 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY 359 

towards heretics as the taint of heresy. His broad and states- 
man-like views condemned alike the arrogance of Louis XIV. 
and the bigotry of James II. of England. He hated with im- 
partial intensity the futile persecutions of the court of Versailles 
and the impolitic concessions to Catholicism which brought 
James II. to his ruin. His reward was that Catholics of both 
courts called him a heretic, while William III. claimed him as 
an ally. 

The short pontificate of Alexander VIII. (1689-1691) was im- 
portant only for the formal close of the quarrel with France by a 
papal manifesto of 1691 declaring the Articles of 1682 to be in- 
valid, of no effect, and not binding even on those who had sworn 
to observe them. He restored nepotism in spite of the good 
example of his predecessor, but — fortunately perhaps — he died 
before much harm was done. 

Innocent XII. (1691-1700) brings the seventeenth century to 
an honourable end. His high ideal, his blameless character, and 
his love of justice are described by Browning in " The Ring and 
the Book". Browning's beautiful portrait of Innocent is history 
expressed in terms of art : it fills in the historical outline without 
violating the tracery of truth. His election was the work of the 
French party, who wanted a peaceable man, and found one. He 
put an end to nepotism for ever by fixing a financial limit to the 
offices which might be held by the relations of a Pope, and he 
u reduced the power of money" by forbidding the sales of certain 
lucrative offices. Perhaps he was sometimes made a tool of, and 
perhaps his goodness of heart was imposed upon by his courtiers. 
The public audiences which he gave to the poor seem to have 
given more consolation than redress, and it was said that his 
ministers played on his charity to distract him from further 
projects of reform. "If he could always act for himself," says 
Contarini, "he would be one of the greatest Popes." 

The seventeenth century, with all its great upheavals, its 
political experiments, and its religious changes, was rich in such 
men. In the modern state system there was no room for the 
Papacy, but the gradual withdrawal of the Popes from European 
politics was the emancipation of the Catholic character. Great 
churchmen were still great politicians, and sometimes corrupt 
ones, but, on the whole, the type of Bossuet and Fenelon tended 
to supersede the type of Richelieu, and the last two Innocents 
created a tradition which effaced the moral relapse of Urban 
VIII. and Innocent X. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE CENTURY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, 
a.d. 1700-1846 

IN the eighteenth century a succession of innocent Popes 
suffered humiliation at the hands of a world of sinners, 
and the Papacy had to face the consequences of all the 
moral shortcomings of its history. All the currents of hostile 
opinion which had been gaining force in the seventeenth century 
beat against the Rock of St. Peter in the eighteenth. In the end 
they broke themselves upon it, but meanwhile it offered an 
unresisting front to the attacks of wave upon wave of the great 
tide of the " Enlightenment". 

The moral of the wars of the Spanish Succession, with which 
the century opens, was the same as the moral of the Thirty 
Years' War. It showed that the Popes must pay as dearly for 
not taking a side as the Popes of earlier days had paid for doing 
so. Clement XI. (1700-1721) was a good and upright man who 
tried, from the best of motives, to be neutral in the great struggle, 
and drew down on himself in consequence the hostility of both 
sides. He was naturally inclined to take the side of Louis XIV. 
— now a chastened Catholic — who wanted to give Spain to his 
second son, the adopted heir of the last Hapsburg. There was 
more than one reason why the Popes should favour this Bourbon 
candidate. It was still a part of their policy to prefer French to 
Spanish power in Naples, so as to avoid the uncomfortable 
position of being between the two fires fed with the same Spanish 
fuel — Milan and Naples. This consideration had led Innocent 
XII. to approve and perhaps to suggest the adoption of Philip of 
France by Charles II. in his will. Lastly, the Peace of West- 
phalia had torn the Empire and the Papacy asunder, and the 
alliance of Austria with the leading Protestant in Europe, William 
III., widened the breach. 

In spite of all this, Clement would not commit himself to the 
recognition of Philip as King of Naples, and an Austrian army 
found means of forcing him to accept the Archduke Charles. At 
the Peace of Utrecht, 1713, neither side had any special interest 
in gratifying the Pope, and the result was that his rights were 

360 



THE CENTURY OE THE ENLIGHTENMENT 361 

set aside in Naples, in Sicily, in Parma and Piacenza ; the new 
kingdom of Sardinia was given to Savoy without any reference to 
the Pope. Spain's sudden occupation of this island defeated 
Clement's scheme for a Crusade, by which he had hoped to 
restore his prestige. The fleet which he had persuaded Spain to 
contribute was used by Alberoni. the Spanish minister, for 
Sardinia, and the eyes of Austria were turned by it from the 
East. 

The new King of Sardinia said of Clement that "he would 
always have been esteemed worthy of the Papacy if he had 
never attained it'". His pontificate occurred at one of those 
dangerous moments in history when an age which has worn 
itself out is passing away. The last phase of the Grand Monarqne 
in France was a time of surging intellectual movement, held 
under by the militant orthodoxy of the old King. The crushing 
and unfortunate Bull " Unigenitus " was issued by Clement 
against the Jansenists in 1713. "'pour faire plaisir au roi". The 
progress of Jansenism in the years leading up to ,; Unigenitus " 
was due to the opposition which it had met. Louis's bout of 
orthodoxy found an outlet in the destruction of the Port Royal 
Convent in 1709. Before that he had extorted a milder form of 
the •'• Unigenitus " Bull from Clement which gave him power to 
proceed against the nuns. Even Fenelon had approved of this 
earlier Bull, for the Jansenists were now ubiquitous and defiant. 
But persecution had the usual effect, and in 1710 Fenelon had 
to own that the Jansenists were everywhere — in society, at the 
Sorbonne. and among the Clergy and the religious orders. At 
the time of the death of Louis in 1715. France was divided into 
two camps ; the Jansenists had the majority, but the Jesuit — or 
••Unigenitus" — party dominated the court. The question at 
issue turned on the " Infallibility " of the papal Bull, which the 
Jansenists disputed and the Jesuits affirmed Under the Regency, 
the Jansenists were at first tolerated, owing to their strength, and 
the general relaxation of the government. But the peace with 
Spain produced a revival of the Jesuit influence, and in 1723 a 
Jansenist says that "'Rome rules over us more than ever it did". 
The young King's confessor was a Jesuit, and the " Chambre du 
Pape" exercised a censorship over Jansenist literature. The im- 
moral but not altogether incapable Dubois bought his way to 
the Cardinalate by his zeal against the Jansenists as President 
of the Clerical Assembly. Finally, in 1725, Louis XV. was 
married to a Polish princess who bore the significant nickname 
of " Unigenita ; \ 

But the opposition was no longer confined to a group of unruly 



»•' 



362 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

and unorthodox mystics. In 1721, Montesquieu published his 
"Lettres Persanes" — a cold-blooded and obscene piece of litera- 
ture with which the age of reason opened its direct attack on the 
Papacy. The Pope, according to Montesquieu, was an old idol 
worshipped from habit, and only worth attacking because of 
his magician's power of making people believe absurdities. 
Montesquieu was not the first to throw the stone, but he was the 
most skilled in hitting the mark. Like his contemporaries, he 
borrowed his negations from Montaigne, his ethics from the 
"Libertines" of the seventeenth century, and his irony from 
Bayle (1646-1706). These things were what is called " in the 
air," which means that they were latent in the unconscious life 
of the early eighteenth century. The thin veil of religion under 
the Maintenon regime barely hid the atheism which was the 
intellectual fashion. In the same way the propriety on the 
surface of Louis's court life half- revealed the "moral chaos "- 
which broke through under the Regency. In political philosophy, 
too, the defenders of absolutism, like Hobbes, passed the most 
vital part of their theory to the upholders of constitutional 
government, who found a leader in Locke. It is possible to 
regard the eighteenth century as the age which unmasked 
hypocrisy : at anyrate it must be exonerated from the charge 
of pretending to be other than it was — irreligious, defiant, and 
licentious. 

Clement XL was followed by three successively inconspicuous 
Popes, under whom the alliance between the eighteenth-century 
philosophers and the Jansenists gained ground unchecked. Inno- 
cent XIII. (1721-1724) was kind-hearted and feeble ; Benedict 
XIII. (1724-1730), a " bonhomme fort pieux, fort faible, et fort 
sot," gave the forces of unbelief fresh grounds for blasphemy by the 
favour which he showed to the scandalous Cardinal Coscia, who 
revived the practices of unregenerate days by trafficking in spirit- 
ual privileges ; Clement XII. (1730-1740) was dominated by his 
nephews and by Cardinal Alberoni, the leader of the so-called 
" Zelanti " party, which had elected him. A fierce and intricate 
struggle over the antiquated investiture question absorbed 
Clement's pontificate, the outcome of which was the election in 
1740 of Lambertini, a man of compromise, whose temperament 
was a surety for peace, as Benedict XIV. (1740-1758). Walpole 
said of him that he was " loved by Papists, esteemed by Pro- 
testants, a priest without insolence or interest, a prince without 
favourites, a Pope without nephews ". The picture is a negative 
one, and inasmuch as it is true it condemns the subject. For 
the times demanded other qualities in a Pope than those which 



THE CENTUKY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 363 

the " merry witty Bolognese " had to offer. His policy in Italy 
and in Spain was based on compromise and concession, and it 
might be claimed that his lack of interest in temporal politics 
was at least as much a virtue as a fault. But the mind of 
Europe was now centred in France, and a policy of drift among 
the conflicting currents there was disastrous for St. Peter's ship. 
The Pope was fatally addicted to literature, and as the personal 
friend of Voltaire and patron of Montesquieu it was hard for him 
to stand aloof from the " Esprit philosophique " which was so 
closely allied to the twin monsters of atheism and Jansenism. 
The Jesuit spirit, on the other hand, was uncongenial to him, 
although he was the personal friend of the General of the Order. 
In 1742 Voltaire dedicated his drama " Mahomet" to Benedict 
XIV., and the Pope thanked him for the compliment, in spite of 
the fact that its publication was forbidden in Paris. In 1748 he 
gave the author of the " Esprit des Lois " a dispensation from 
fasting, but the Jesuits and Jansenists combined for once in an 
outcry which compelled him to put the book on the Index, in 
spite of which it ran through twenty-one editions. The publica- 
tion of the Encyclopaedia — the " Bible of unbelief " — containing 
articles on all the debatable points which Catholicism had 
omitted to defend, gave fresh impetus to the atheistical move- 
ment. The career of Madame Pompadour, in her character of 
religious arbiter between the Jesuits and Jansenists, supplied the 
necessary moral indignation without which the crusades of anti- 
religion inevitably miss the mark. Against the worst danger 
which Catholicism had ever had to face from without, the forces 
of the Church were not only divided but subdivided into hostile 
camps. At the moment when the Jesuit and Jansenist duel 
had broken out with renewed vigour, at the end of the pontifi- 
cate of Benedict XIV., the Jesuits were divided against them- 
selves into two rival parties by the question of reform. The 
spirit of worldliness had found its way through the vulnerable 
points in the fortress of the Society of Jesus. Their connection 
with politics, and in particular the independence of the Jesuit 
State of Paraguay, involved them in political complications with 
Spain and Portugal. Their commercial rivals in the wine trade 
attacked them by demanding a Visitation of the Order. It was 
therefore highly necessary to them that a Pro- Jesuit Pope should 
be appointed to succeed Benedict and to defend the order in 
case of need. 

The election of Clement XIII. (1758-1769) was therefore 
worked by the Jesuits for their own advantage. But they soon 
found out that he was " Nathaniel — not an Apostle " — or in 



364 A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

other words a weak reed. It might have been impossible even 
for a strong champion to save the Jesuits at this time, for the 
storm-clouds were gathering fast against them. Weakened out- 
wardly by their contests with Jansenism, and inwardly by the 
wear and tear to their ideals, to which their intimacy with the 
world had peculiarly exposed them, the Jesuits had to face a 
Bourbon combination against them, based on the report of a 
hostile Visitation, and supported in France by a charge of 
regicide doctrine, and in Spain by supposed responsibility for a 
series of popular uprisings. In 1762 the Jesuit schools were 
closed in France, and two years later the Order was expelled from 
the country. Clement tried to save them, and the Bull " Apostoli- 
cum Pascendi" in 1765 was intended to ward off the anger of the 
King of Spain. But it was too late. The Jesuits had aroused 
too many storms of hatred for anything less than a strong and 
steady blast of Catholic enthusiasm to counter, and there was 
no quarter in eighteenth-century Europe from which such a 
wind could be expected to blow. Charles III. of Spain was not 
at heart antagonistic to the Jesuits, but his ministers were 
Jansenists and it was always easy to make the Jesuit doctrines 
responsible for anarchical movements. So in 1767, the Jesuits 
were expelled from Spain and their interesting political experi- 
ment in Paraguay came to an end. Before the end of Clement's 
pontificate something like a Jesuit war was being waged in 
Europe, and his death in 1769 meant life or death to the Order 
which he had striven in vain to uphold. 

The election of Ganganelli as Clement XIV. (1769-1744) was 
so great a disappointment to the Zelanti, as the Jesuit party were 
called, that they afterwards denied its validity on the plea that 
simony was involved. Clement loved peace and justice, and 
hated persecution. But he was wearied with the tedious com- 
plaints of the Jesuits and the importunities of their enemies the 
Bourbon princes. He gave concessions in order to gain time, 
and succeeded in delaying the official condemnation of the 
Order, for which Europe was clamouring, for four more years. 
But it had to come, and in 1773 the Bull was drafted which dis- 
banded the spiritual army of the Church. The Jesuits were 
offered pensions if they would give up their Order, but the 
unequalled discipline which Loyola had given to his followers 
stood them in good stead at the last, and the Society of Jesus 
survived even this last and most insidious of the many attacks 
which were intended to destroy it. It survived, and that was all. 
Its power was annulled and its influence relegated to subterranean 
channels and far-away haunts. But it held together in the 



THE CENTUEY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 365 

darkness and waited for the light which would surely break over 
the world when the glare of the "enlightenment" should pass 
away, and the dawn of a purer religion gladden the life of man. 

The herald of that dawn was already on the wing when 
America " shouted to liberty " in 1776, and fifteen years later laid 
down the great amendment to the Declaration of Independence 
which announced the birth of religious freedom, miscalled 
toleration, in the New World. It is the glory of America to 
have discovered the great truth, which centuries of persecution 
had failed to bring home to the Old World, that the State 
cannot " tolerate " religion : the State can only recognise spiritual 
freedom. In maintaining that "Congress shall make no law 
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the 
press," America has made a stand in history for which all 
nations should call her blessed, and to which the Old World has 
capitulated, in more or less degree, ever since. But the truth 
which the New World had stumbled upon was not recognised at 
once in the Old. The Papacy, being weak, had to face a new 
access of political opposition from Germany. An Erastian party, 
headed by Von Hontheim, Elector of Treves, demanded a 
National Church on a plan similar to that which Henry VIII. 
had wished to establish in England. The Emperor, Joseph II. 
of Austria (1780-1792), embarked on a policy of suppressing 
monasteries and dictating public worship. To make him desist 
Pius VI. set out from Rome and first earned the title of the 
"Apostolic pilgrim" by his unsuccessful mission. In France 
the gathering storm-clouds were beginning to swallow up the 
whole prospect, and sweep the various currents of philosophical 
dispute into the one vast and overwhelming force of the Revolu- 
tion. At first the Church in France supported the Revolution, 
but in May, 1790, it was alienated by a series of hostile enact- 
ments, and although some clergy submitted to them, the majority 
went into opposition and stood out boldly against the approach- 
ing madness of the Terror. An oath was imposed which the 
Pope condemned, and the King fled to avoid the apostasy of 
acquiescence. So that when the Monarchy fell in August, 1792, 
the Catholic religion fell with it, and the establishment of 
atheism in 1793 was the logical outcome of earlier events. The 
passing of the Terror brought no mitigation of the hostility with 
which the ruling powers treated the Church, and the only act of 
toleration which was passed was instantly withdrawn in 1797. 

One might have expected that Napoleon would have used 
the Church as an ally in the restoration of that good order which 



366 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

was necessary to military success. Such, indeed, was his pro- 
fessed attitude to it. "I regard religion," he said, "not as the 
mystery of the Incarnation, but as the secret of social order." 
And yet Napoleon's policy towards the Papacy was from the 
first hostile and aggressive. In 1796 the French armies invaded 
Bologna and the old Pope had to buy a truce on heavy terms 
which he could not fulfil. Having thus succeeded in putting 
Pius VI. at a disadvantage Napoleon pressed it home ; he seized 
Ancona and threatened Rome. Pius was compelled to make 
peace, and Joseph Bonaparte was sent as ambassador to Rome 
with orders to create discord. The Roman democrats were 
encouraged to invite French help in a revival of the republican 
movement, with the result that the papal troops found them- 
selves once more at war with the French. The French general, 
Berthier, entered Rome in the name of France and occupied the 
castle of St. Angelo while the Republicans took the city. The old 
Pope, now in his eighties, confronted the soldiers bravely and 
submitted to insult in the Vatican, and one may hope that he 
had the consolation of knowing that his victors had made the 
fatal mistake which throughout history had overtaken the 
oppressors of St. Peter. Pius VI. was sent away in a carriage to 
the Dominicans at Siena and thence to Valence, where in the 
course of the year 1798 he died of a broken heart. 

The lack of money had forced Napoleon into this first great 
indiscretion in hisi dealings with the Papacy. The lack of his- 
torical insight made it possible for him to go further in the same 
mistaken direction. At the time of the election of Pius VII. 
(1800-1814) there were signs abroad that a religious revival was 
about to set in. The Church in France had never lost its hold 
on the provinces, and under the Directory the priests began quietly 
to return to Paris. The so-called Constitutional Church, which 
had bent itself to the varying will of the revolutionary State, had 
forfeited the respect which it had never deserved, while, on the 
other hand, the priests who had remained loyal to the Papacy 
reaped the harvest of persecution in the love and reverence of 
sincere Catholics throughout France. The First Consul, although 
he professed himself frankly to be more a Mohammedan than 
anything else, declared his willingness to make Catholicism 
"dominant" in France. The wearied French Catholics and the 
sympathetic new Pope were alike unable to see the difference be- 
tween the patronising offer of Napoleon and the American system 
which their hearts desired. Even if it did not satisfy the more 
enlightened among them, it was acceptable on the grounds that 
half a loaf is better than no bread. So, in spite of suspicions on 



THE CENTUBY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 367 

both sides, the terms of Napoleon were formulated and sent to 
Rome in the draft of the first Concordat. The words " dominant 
religion " were changed to the more non-committal " religion of 
the majority," and the minister sent to Rome to present the 
agreement was instructed to " behave towards the Pope as though 
he was in command of two hundred thousand men". The Pope 
stood out against certain features of Napoleon's offer, and par- 
ticularly in regard to four points. He opposed Napoleon's desire 
to recognise the "constitutional" clergy, by whom the papal 
authority had been set aside. He objected to the confiscation of 
Church lands on the system laid down by the Concordat. He 
insisted that the Bishops at present in occupation of the Sees of 
France should resign, and that the Catholic religion should be 
recognised as the State religion if the State was to claim the 
right to make appointments to vacant bishoprics. The Pope's 
delay in accepting his terms irritated Napoleon, but, after tearing 
up the Pope's reply, he eventually signed the document. 

The first Concordat, which was signed in 1801 and published 
in 1802, was in itself a good offer from the Catholic point of 
view. It safeguarded the honour of the French Catholics and 
of the Papacy, and, of course, Pius VII. accepted it. The difficulty 
was to make the compromise workable, and this obvious defect 
gave to the First Consul his opportunity to juggle with the Con- 
cordat to his own advantage. Under the guise of an appendix 
intended to fill in the details of its administration, Napoleon in- 
vented the so-called " Organic Articles," which, in practice, gave 
entire control of the Church in France to himself and " bound 
the Church by links of steel and gold to every French Govern- 
ment down to the year 1905 ". But the First Consul had once 
more gained the shadow and lost the substance of power. He 
pressed his advantage home to the uttermost. He demanded 
the creation of five French Cardinals to safeguard his influence 
in the Consistory, and he secured in 1803 a Concordat for the 
Italian Church on the same lines as that of France. But the 
total result amounted to something different from the First 
Consul's intention. The spirit of Catholicism, refreshed by the 
outward peace, gained strength to resist him, and the Gallican- 
ism which he wished to foster languished under his care, while 
the ultra-montane spirit revived, and, through the events which 
followed, burned with a steady flame of loyalty to the ill-treated 
Pope. 

In the course of the year 1802 Napoleon became First Consul 
for life, and it was clear that he was aiming at the Crown. In 
1804 he became Emperor and desired papal confirmation of his 



368 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

act. Pius set out for Paris to perform the Coronation, in ignor- 
ance of the fact that Napoleon had already crowned himself, and 
to perform the marriage of Napoleon with Josephine. He returned 
to Rome without having secured a single privilege, and in the 
same year a further cause of hostility arose. Napoleon's " little 
brother Jerome" had contracted an awkward marriage with 
Miss Paterson of Baltimore, which, in view of a higher destiny, 
Napoleon wished to have annulled. The marriage being perfectly 
canonical, Pius refused to do so, whereupon Napoleon annulled 
it himself by imperial decree. A further quarrel in 1805 turned 
on the garrisoning of Ancona by Napoleon. This exploit of 
Napoleon's at the time of the Austrian war had caused a dispute 
between Austria, who thought that the Pope should have pre- 
vented it, but the Pope dared neither oppose Napoleon nor 
confess to Austria his inability to restrain him. The battle of 
Trafalgar in 1805 gave him the necessary courage to complain, 
and in answering him Napoleon adopted the Charlemagne tone, 
and declared that he had garrisoned Ancona for the defence of 
the Pope. Pius disclaimed both the obligation and the need of 
such protection, and expostulated further against Joseph Bona- 
parte's action in seizing the throne of Naples without regard to 
the papal suzerainty thereof. 

The Emperor replied as a mediaeval Emperor would have 
done. He marched an army into the papal States, and gave the 
Pope's possessions in Naples to Talleyrand. Finding the Pope 
unshaken in spirit, he threatened in 1806 to occupy the whole 
papal territory. Pius still held out; he opposed Napoleon in 
Venice, and, in 1807, he offered to close the ports which 
Napoleon already held. Pius had a gentle Christian soul, but he 
had the courage necessary to maintain his dignity. He would 
be conquered if he must, but he would not submit, and in this 
he persisted through all his troubles to the great embarrassment 
of his oppressor. In 1809 the papal States fell to Napoleon, the 
papal army was absorbed into the French army, and the Pope 
was surrounded by Frenchmen. Finally, Rome itself was an- 
nexed, and the tricouleur replaced the papal banner. Pius still 
thundered his condemnation, and the Bull "Cum Memoranda" 
asserted the Papal supremacy in uncompromising terms, and the 
utter condemnation and excommunication of his enemies. His 
behaviour was both courageous and masterly. Napoleon carried 
him off first to Florence and then to Savona, wishing to exhibit 
to the world the humiliating position to which his power had 
brought the successor of St. Peter. But Pius turned his captivity 
into a catastrophe by refusing to perform pontifical acts. Na- 



THE CENTUKY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 369 

poleon above all wanted his divorce, which Pius refused to give. 
The Emperor then tried, as others had tried before him, to do 
without the Pope, but his failure was assured. The so-called 
"Gallican experiment" turned against himself. The Commis- 
sion summoned to endorse his ecclesiastical policy declared him 
in the wrong, and had to be dismissed. The Senatus Consulta 
of 1810 decreed the adherence of future Popes to the Declaration 
of 1682. The Cardinals were attacked for their refusal to nullify 
Napoleon's marriage with Josephine, and dispense his marriage 
with Marie-Louise. Those who refused were degraded and be- 
came " Black Cardinals ". Pius himself continued to hold out, 
and demanded his liberty before he would discuss negotiations. 

In January, 1811, a new Commission demanded the liberation 
of the Pope. In June a National Council was summoned, which 
showed increased loyalty to Pius, and refused to act independ- 
ently of him. An unsigned document, promising to appoint 
Bishops within six months or forfeit his rights to the Metropolitan, 
was produced by Napoleon as coming from the Pope, but the 
Council had to be reformed before its ratification of the document 
could be extorted. Even then the papal confirmation was 
necessary, and, until September, Pius held out. But he finally 
gave way and signed it in a form which Napoleon thought to be 
too pontifical and insufficiently Gallican. It was, however, a 
sign of weakening. The old Pope was enfeebled by captivity, 
and, when he found himself carried off to the lovely splendour of 
Fontainebleau, his resistance for a time broke down. He signed 
the preliminary draft of the Concordat of Fontainebleau on Janu- 
ary 18, 1813, and thus abandoned his rights of institution in 
France. He afterwards retracted his consent, but his breach of 
faith was more deplorable than his momentary weakness. 

The year 1813 saw the sunset of the Napoleonic power, and 
in 1814 Pius VII. was free and on his way to Rome, having been 
liberated at the demand of the allies. The failure of Napoleon 
in his treatment of the Church might seem to be only incidental 
to his failure to establish a permanent hegemony in Europe, but 
in reality the victory of the Church was a real victory, due to the 
limitation of the Emperor's vision. He had wanted the alliance 
of the Pope, and tried first by agreement and afterwards by force 
to obtain it. He failed to realise that the alliance which he 
sought would be valueless unless it were bestowed by the free- 
will of the Pope. The Church must be free or else it ceases to 
be itself, and it is in virtue of this axiom that it has always been 
able to take captivity captive. 

The Rome to which Pius VII. returned after his exile greeted 
24 



370 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

him with the pathetic enthusiasm which was reminiscent of the 
Middle Ages. For Rome was now as ever a prey to the inevit- 
able spirit of faction, but in place of the greater duels of earlier 
times bands of robbers and organised brigands struck terror and 
admiration into the hearts of the inconsistent populace. Secret 
societies of all kinds flourished, and were classed under the head- 
ing of "freemasons". To cope with these disorders the Pope 
found himself faced with a totally inadequate revenue and a 
chaotic system of government. Napoleon had temporarily in- 
creased the papal revenue by selling Church property, but most 
of these funds were already spent and there were Congregations 
and Cardinalates to be endowed, in addition to the restoration of 
nearly two thousand monasteries and 612 convents. 

To help him in the superhuman task which confronted him 
the old Pope had at his side the master-mind of the Cardinal 
Consalvi. It was he who had strengthened by his presence and 
counsel the resistance of the Pope at Fontainebleau, and it was 
he who had upheld the power of the Papacy at the Congress of 
Vienna. Napoleon said of him, " This man, who never would 
become a priest, is more of a priest than all the others". 
Consalvi lived in the world the life of a man of the world, and it 
was inconsistent with his theories that such a man as himself 
should be a priest. He therefore refused to burden himself with 
the priestly office and remained only in the minor orders neces- 
sary to his acceptance of the cardinalate. On his return from 
the Congress of Vienna he became " the soul of the Pope," and 
in 1816 he put into effect his programme for the government of 
the Patrimony. The system which he favoured was a form of 
Napoleonic bureaucracy, known as the " Montuproprio ". He 
divided the papal territories into twenty-one Delegations over 
which Cardinals presided, with Governors under them selected 
from the prelature. Consalvi's government never had a chance 
of success, for it depended on the existence of competent officials, 
and there were none to be found. Moreover, there was a vigorous 
opposition, headed by his rival, Cardinal Pacca, and supported 
by the reactionary element among the Cardinals and by those 
whose privileges were menaced by the revival of government. 
The opposition could point to serious defects and still more 
serious gaps in the work of Consalvi. His attempt to deal with 
the brigands by a treaty was ingenious but not practical. On 
the principle of "set a thief to catch a thief" he gave rise to a 
ghastly vendetta between two of the chief robber families, who 
attacked one another in the interests of the peace. A still more 
vital defect was the total lack of any system of education, for 






THE CENTUKY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 371 

this undermined the whole structure on which his bureaucracy 
should have rested. The total ignorance both of the rulers and 
of the ruled produced injustice and incompetence on the one 
hand and lawlessness on the other. 

In guiding the foreign policy of the Pope, Consalvi showed a 
truer statesmanship. During his absence at Vienna, Cardinal 
della Genga had persuaded Pius to repudiate all the agreements 
with France since 1797, on the ground that they had been 
extorted by force, and to reinstate the old Bishops in place of 
the " Eveques de cir Constance," as the more accommodating Con- 
cordat Bishops were called. Consalvi realised that this was fatal 
and protested vehemently to Cardinal Pacca, proposing as an 
alternative that alterations should be made in the Concordat. 
In 1815, he drew up the alterations, which were duly ratified by 
Pius in June, 1817. But the evils which had been wrought by 
the attempted breach of faith could only be modified by the 
later and more honourable policy. In Germany, the influence 
of Metternich encouraged the national spirit at the expense of 
the Pope, especially in Bavaria, Hanover, and the Upper Rhine. 
But Consalvi watched his opportunities and in course of time, 
Metternich's growing Catholicism enabled him to make treaties 
with Bavaria, with Prussia, and with the Upper Rhine, and 
subsequently with Russia. 

In Italy, Consalvi was lenient to the nationalist movements 
and opposed to cruelty. King Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia was 
his close friend and ally, and the King of Naples was bought by 
the promise of papal support in his attempt to establish his 
absolutism. Consalvi was very friendly to England — more so 
than to Ireland, and he urged the Pope not to abandon the cause 
of the Catholic emancipation to please the lawless Irish. There 
was some trouble with Russia concerning the proposal to establish 
a Metropolitan Bishop at Vilna, but Consalvi made peace in 
spite of it, and conceded the right to the Czar Alexander — 
although schismatic — of nominating candidates to Catholic 
bishoprics in his dominions. 

In August, 1823, Pius VII. ended his long and weary pilgrim- 
age upon earth, and his heart-broken friend and adviser followed 
him five months later. In their lighter moments the two friends 
had worked together for the revival of art, and under their in- 
spiration a new wing of the Vatican was opened, and gave a 
symbol to the world of the restoration of holy religion. 

Pius VII. was succeeded by the old enemy of Consalvi, Cardinal 
della Genga, who took the name of Leo XII. (1823-1829). He 
put a summary conclusion to the work of his rival by a complete 



wammmmm 



372 A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

reversal of his policy along the lines of extreme reaction. A 
rule of violent severity did much to foster the underlying current 
of liberalism which was, of course, strengthened into fuller life by 
persecution. Under Leo, Cardinal Rivarola condemned 508 
"Carbonari," or members of secret societies, without trial, in 
three months, while 368 persons were placed under supervision 
and forced to keep spiritual observances. Forced marriages 
between rival sects, persecutions of the Jews, the supervision of 
education by the Jesuits, all tended to fill the same stream with 
the rising current of revolutionary discontent. The reaction 
continued under Pius VIII. (1829-1830), and the accession of the 
monk Capellari, as Gregory XVI. (1830-1846), carried it to its 
zenith. A sudden, violent, and short-lived revolution in the 
States of the Church led the Pope to turn for help to Austria and 
so to give away his hard-won independence. The result was that 
the European powers claimed the right to help the Pope to put 
an end to the misrule in his dominion, and demanded the 
participation of laymen in the government of the States of the 
Church. Gregory acceded, but afterwards went back on his con- 
sent ; this resulted in further intervention by Austria, and then 
counter-intervention by France at Ancona, which town became 
the rallying-point of the liberal cause. The cruelty with which 
the Pope's hired soldiers repressed the revolt, and the harshness 
of the reign of reaction, led in 1845 to the Protest of Rimini, 
which was an appeal for the redress of grievances addressed by 
the Pope's subjects to the powers of Europe. But the Pope 
once more took refuge behind the buttress which Austria was 
only too ready to provide and remained in this attitude until his 
death in 1846. 



CHAPTER XXX 
CONCLUSION 

THERE have been moments in history when man's need 
of religion has seemed peculiarly urgent. These are 
the moments of the greatest danger for the Churches. 
For if the old bottles cannot contain the new wine the energy of 
the human spirit will find new channels in ways apart. Such a 
moment was the first half of the nineteenth century, and it was 
no doubt partly to be ascribed to a reaction from the religious 
lethargy of the century of the Enlightenment. The romantic 
movement in literature turned men's minds to history — not so 
much to the critical and scientific study of the past as to the 
thrilling pageantry of historical continuity. "I belong," wrote 
Chateaubriand, "to the general community of mankind, who 
since the creation of the world have prayed to God." Others 
carried this consciousness further,, and tried to dedicate the 
awakening of the religious temper and of the historical mind of 
Europe to the glorification of the Papacy. The old high papal 
doctrine at its most extreme and uncompromising was put 
forward by De Maistre in his famous book, "Du Pape," which 
directed men's attention to the oldest and most historical in- 
stitution in Europe at the very moment when their imagination 
was stirred by its spiritual appeal. 

The brilliant French theologian Lamennais borrowed De 
Maistre's extreme views of the powers of the Pope, and gave 
them a twist in the direction of democracy, finding the " perfect 
law of liberty" in the most absolute obedience to the Pope. 
The dominion of the Papacy was to his liberty-loving spirit a 
refuge from the encroachments on the rights of man by the 
revolutionary government of France. His followers, Lacordaire 
and Montalembert, fought the fight for religious education in 
France in the name of constitutional liberty and papal 
prerogative. 

Gregory XVI. deliberately set aside the opportunity offered to 
the Papacy by the awakening of the soul of Europe. He 
preferred the comfortable paths of reaction on old-fashioned 
lines. " This Abbe," he said of Lamennais, '-'• wanted to give me 

373 



374 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

a power with which I should not have known what to do," and 
the Bull " Mirari Vos " condemned Lamennais' teaching for its 
supposed anarchical tendencies. Gregory greatly preferred — 
although he did not altogether trust it — the teaching of the 
so-called Neo-Gwelfs, whose views became identified in Italy with 
the party of moderate reformers. The romantic movement in 
Italy found a natural expression in the stirring of the cause of 
national unity and independence. A soul-stirring book of 
romance called "I Promessi Sposi," published in 1827 by 
Manzoni, ushered in the great epoch with which the name of 
Garibaldi is associated. But while " Young Italy " was as yet 
a dream, the Neo-Gwelfs borrowed from Gioberti the idea of an 
absolute Pope, raised to pre-eminence in Europe by an artistic 
and intellectual revival, and leading a federation of Italian 
States to national consciousness as a sort of combined Hildebrand 
and Julius II. This movement, founded on " I Promessi Sposi," 
was developed by the writings of Gioberti in 1843. Balbo, the 
historian of the party, concentrated on the " Speranza dTtalia" — 
the liberation of Italy from foreign rule. Italy was now more 
than ever a " geographical expression," and not a nation. 
Lombardy and Venetia were Austrian, Piedmont and Savoy 
belonged to the vigorous monarchy of Sardinia; Tuscany was 
ruled by a Grand Duke, who was more or less under the tutelage 
of Austria, and there remained — in addition to other small 
lordships — Naples and Sicily, ruled by the worst dynasty which 
had ever troubled the turbulent South, and lastly the Papal 
States and the Patrimony of Peter. To get rid of Austria, and 
together with her the whole collection of petty lordships which 
broke up the North ; to support rebellion in Naples, and lead 
Italy to unity in some kind of federation under the Pope — this 
was the original scheme of Gioberti. But as his plan developed, 
he became increasingly interested in the unity of Italy, and the 
leadership of the Pope, he came to regard as a mere means to 
that end. In his later book, published in 1846, he threw over 
the Pope altogether, and supported the idea of federation under 
the leadership of Piedmont. The " secret" sympathy of Charles 
Albert, whose kingdom included Piedmont, Savoy, and Sardinia, 
was already known and discussed among members of the 
moderate reform party. There was much to account for 
Gioberti's change of champions : Charles Albert's kingdom was 
the rising power, and it had the good fortune to possess not only 
a King with ideas, but also the wisest of European statesmen in 
Cavour. The Pope, on the other hand, was a man of limited 
outlook, reactionary propensities, and devoid of any real 



CONCLUSION 375 

sympathy with the ideals of Italian unity except as a means of 
glorification of the Papacy. 

There was, moreover, another current of the reform move- 
ment more dangerous, and more definitely hostile to the existing 
order of things, and it was not easy at this stage to distinguish very 
clearly between them. Opposed to the Neo-Gwelfs, but sharing 
many of their views, was the party of extremists under Mazzini, 
whose book, " Young Italy," published in 1846, gave the whole 
movement a European setting. Mazzini's words were words of 
flame, and his teaching was the gospel of the dagger. The 
princes of Italy could coquette with the party of moderate 
reform, but with the followers of Mazzini there could be no 
compromise and no understanding. Such was the state of Italy 
as Metternich watched it with anxious attention in 1846. Such 
were also the conditions in which Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti was 
hailed with joy and gratitude } when he ascended the papal 
throne as Pius IX. (1846-1878). 

The pontificate of Pius IX., momentous in itself, covered a 
period of tremendous importance in history, and it is not 
possible to give an account of every point at which papal policy 
touched European affairs during his reign. Many of the events 
have still the vividness and the lack of proportion which belong 
to contemporary history. It is difficult in 1920 to write of recent 
history except in the aspect of a prelude to 1914. 

Pius IX. was a good man, ill-matched with his destiny. The 
enthusiasm with which his reign opened was due to his well- 
known sympathy with modern liberal views, and his first act was 
to pardon all the political prisoners who crowded the prisons. 
This general amnesty of July 16, 1846, increased his popularity, 
but while the populace nailed him with joy as " II Papa 
Angelico," the Pope himself did not share their delusions. " My 
God ! " he had been heard to exclaim, " they want to make me 
a Pope, who am only a poor country parson." The amnesty of 
Pius was not the bold initiation of the policy of a liberal Pope 
— it was the kind-hearted impulse of a righteous man. Other 
liberal measures followed it, but these were the outcome of his 
pliable nature, which had not yet decided where to take its stand. 
In 1847 he sanctioned an advisory Council of State, which was 
regarded as the first step towards a constitution. In reality it 
was the last willing concession which the Pope was ready to 
make. Events were moving very rapidly, and the Pope was 
carried along by the stream. " The revolution wants no making, 
it is made," wrote a foreign statesman to King Charles Albert. 
The first anniversary of the amnesty was the occasion of the 



376 A SHOET HISTORY OF THE PAPACY 

supposed Roman Plot. It was rumoured that Austria had 
planned an insurrection throughout the Papal States an favour of 
reaction, and had offered help to the Pope. As a result, Austria 
gained a pretext for the occupation of Ferrara, and a war with 
Austria seemed to be in sight. Pius IX. made a famous speech 
in February, 1848, warning the people against declaring war on 
Austria, but in the course of it he used the magic words, " God 
bless Italy ! " The crowd went its way rejoicing over the good 
Italian views of the Papa Angelico, and forgot the rest. In 
March, Pius was driven, by the success of a revolution in Naples, 
which had taken place in the preceding month, to give a constitu- 
tion to the Papal States. It was an unworkable scheme by reason 
of its extremely cautious and guarded character, but it confirmed 
the popular estimate of his supposed liberalism. Tuscany and 
Piedmont had already followed Naples to constitutional liberty, 
and Cavour was rapidly building up the vigorous constitutional 
monarchy which brought his King, Charles Albert, forward as 
the natural leader of the forces of liberty against the foreigner 
and the oppressor. 

A rising in Vienna and the flight of Metternich brought the 
opportunity for the Austrian war, which opened with the famous 
" Five Days' " revolution in Milan, followed a fortnight later by 
the proclamation of the Republic of Venice. The Pope seemed 
at first to be ready to fall in with the popular movement, but the 
Jesuits restrained him by working on his fears of a schism in 
Austria. He therefore held aloof from the opening of the war 
and kept the Austrian ambassador at his side. But the general 
of the Roman army called it a Crusade, and the Pope had to 
follow where the overwhelming enthusiasm of his subjects led. 
But the war of 1848, in spite of the patriotism which inspired it, 
was a failure, and the treaty of Salasco which ended it, restored 
everything to Austria except Venice, who continued to make good 
her resistance. The causes of the failure lay in the mental disunion 
of the Italian States. Before the union of Italy was accomplished, 
the leaders were arguing among themselves as to the form of 
government which should be adopted. The anarchy which had 
followed the revolution in Naples, and the suicide of the Nea- 
politan constitution had lost the South. 

When failure became apparent, Pius published an Encyclical 
denouncing the war. His subjects were already disillusioned by 
the failure of his constitution, which in the hands of the reactionary 
Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, had proved to be a mockery 
of liberty. The Encyclical put him definitely at variance with 
his people, and did him no good with Austria. The Austrians 



CONCLUSION 377 

had attacked Bologna on the pretext of the support given by the 
papal troops to Piedmont. Pius found himself between two fires. 
His friendship had no value for Austria, who therefore took no 
pains to get it, and he neither dared nor wished to identify him- 
self with the revolutionary movement, which was now avowedly 
Republican and Mazzinian. With the help of Rossi, the leader 
of the moderate reformers, he put forward a new version of the 
Neo-Gwelf ideal in a league of Italian princes. The answer to 
this was the assassination of Rossi on November 15, 1848, and the 
flight of the Pope to Gaeta. While Pius stayed away from Rome, 
a Republic was proclaimed, and two Governments strove for 
mastery, the one reactionary, under Cardinal Antonelli, and the 
other revolutionary, under Mazzini, and associated with Mazzini, 
the striking figure of Garibaldi. In April, 1849, France inter- 
vened on behalf of the Pope, and after a defeat by Garibaldi, the 
French army made an assault on Rome which gave it a dominant 
hold in the city. 

It has sometimes been thought that the Pius IX. who returned 
to Rome from Gaeta in 1850 was a different man from the Pope 
who had left it so hurriedly sixteen months before. But it is 
unlikely that Pius had undergone any great change of mind 
because his mind had never been made up. In the interval the 
issue had become clearer, and helped by Antonelli, with his 
mediaeval views and his Machiavellian temperament, he had 
decided once and for ever to take his stand against liberalism in 
all its forms, and to avail himself of whatever foreign help should 
offer the best promise of permanent reaction. This at first 
seemed to be France, and the personal loyalty of Napoleon III. 
was at his service, as well as the support of the clerical party 
in France. But Austria was a more natural and permanent ally 
for the Pope in his capacity of Italian ruler, for Austria had a 
more fundamental interest in opposing Italian unity. The fusion 
of the two movements of liberalism and of Italian nationality 
was completed by the development of the power of Piedmont 
under Cavour. 

The accession of " II Re Galantuomo," the wise young Victor 
Emmanuel II., to the throne of Piedmont was the best hope of 
Italian patriots in the evil days of 1849. In putting his house in 
order he had, of course, to face what other national leaders had 
had to confront in all ages, the task of emancipation from papal 
interference and clerical misrule. Under the influence of Cavour, 
" a free Church in a free State " was gradually secured. The 
Siccardi laws in 1850 and the later laws of Rattazzi freed the 
young kingdom from the complications and injustices of clerical 



378 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

immunity from civil law, and other forms of papal intervention 
in the government. This of course increased the antagonism 
which was already latent between the young kingdom and the 
Papacy. Piedmont was the protagonist of young Italy in the 
struggle against Austria. In the period of Austrian oppression 
which reopened in 1852, the Papacy backed the oppressors, 
while Cavour looked to France, bargaining with Napoleon to 
surrender Savoy and Nice to France as the price of help in the 
Austrian war. This cold-blooded political marketing brought no 
good to the kingdom of Piedmont, and the new Austrian war 
ended in the betrayal of the Italians by France at the Peace of 
Villafranca in 1859. Italy had gained nothing, but Savoy and 
Nice were lost, and " sold like sheep " against their will. 

But the makers of Italy had done their work, and a series of 
new revolts proved that the soul of a nation, when once it has 
achieved consciousness, has won the victory that overcometh. 
Garibaldi's brilliant expedition in Naples and Sicily brought in 
the South, where the rotten Bourbon monarchy crumbled and 
fell. In spite of the split between Cavour and Garibaldi, Italy 
began to hold together, iand the annexation of the Romagna was 
peacefully accomplished. The papal army under a French 
general, Lamoriciere, was ordered to disband. The Pope's 
refusal to carry out the order gave Cavour an excuse to annex 
the rest of the Papal States, and at Castelfidando, September 18, 
1861, the Italian armies won the victory which fulfilled the pro- 
phecy that " Savoy would eat up the Italian artichoke leaf by 
leaf". 

In February, 1861, the first Parliament of United Italy met at 
Turin, and it was inevitable that its decrees should clash with 
the papal prerogative. The temporal power of the Pope in Italy 
had been reduced by conquest and annexation to the Patrimony 
of Peter. He was now asked to forego all his powers, to recognise 
a hostile civil code, with civil marriage, etc., as already estab- 
lished in Piedmont, in territory which had belonged to him for a 
thousand years. Pius IX., still urged along by Antonelli, decided 
to harden his defences. Political concordats of the Papacy with 
Austria, Spain, and Prussia had put his foreign policy on a 
reliable basis. The Oxford Movement in England seemed to be 
revealing a less recalcitrant spirit in a country which had long 
been Protestant in politics but never Protestant in mind or 
aspiration. Catholic emancipation was still an encouraging 
novelty. Above all, his new subjects in America, and those who 
had carried their Catholicism across the seas to the new world, 
made the West radiant with hope. So Pius IX. turned from his 



CONCLUSION 379 

temporal losses to the vision of spiritual victories. Had he been 
a man like the saintly founder of that vision, Gregory the Great, 
he might have won the world : as it was, he lost it by following 
in the footsteps of Innocent III. He saw the Catholic Church 
dethroned and dispossessed, and this, not in an age of indifference 
or cynicism, but at a time of acute spiritual yearning. The great 
discoveries of science in the nineteenth century had swept the 
cobwebs out of Heaven, and set a light there, which by consuming 
the unreal, revealed the true glory of the Christian vision. The 
momentary pessimism, which is associated with the views of the 
early nineteenth-century economists, passed as quickly as a cloud, 
and the bracing effect of Charles Darwin's " Origin of Species " 
(1859) kindled a brighter flame than the one which it extinguished. 
When the theory of evolution called its noble challenge to faith, 
Newman sang his " Praise to the Holiest in the Height " (1865), 
and Browning's triumphant assertion gave the answer of un- 
daunted faith. 

There shall never be one lost good ! What was shall live as before, 
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound, 

What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more ; 
On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven a perfect round. 

Pius IX. lost touch with the spiritual aspiration of the world. 
The series of dogmatic pronouncements with which he tried to 
answer the anxious questionings of the nations was unsatisfying. 
The series began in 1854 with the decree which made the 
Immaculate Conception of the Virgin an essential article of the 
Catholic Faith. This doctrine had been the subject of mediaeval 
dispute between the Thomists and the Scotists in the schools of 
Paris. The Jesuits afterwards made it a part of their teaching 
and documents were forged in support of it. The documents 
were afterwards condemned by the Pope, but the belief in the 
doctrine had already passed into piety. Vagueness and in- 
decision in doctrinal matters worried Pius, in spite of his 
tendency towards it in political affairs. He therefore opened his 
spiritual bombardment by a pronouncement which narrowed the 
gate without furthering the unity of Catholicism. 

The " Quanta Cura " Encyclical was the next attack, which 
declared war on the whole modern and liberal system of ideas. 
The Syllabus of 1864 denned these, forced them all to their 
logical conclusion, and condemned them indiscriminately. Pius 
IX. forced an issue by his pedantic logic, and sealed up the 
truths of religion into an inaccessible treasury remote from the 
heart of man. Among the errors condemned by the Syllabus 



380 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

were the questioning of the Pope's right to employ force, and in 
illustration of this lesson the celebrated inquisitor Arbue's was 
canonised. The Syllabus further declared it to be an error 
to maintain that Popes had ever exceeded their powers or 
encroached on the rights of princes — that the source of clerical 
immunity from civil jurisdiction lies in the secular law — that 
other religions should be tolerated in Catholic countries — that the 
Pope should reconcile himself with liberalism or the progress of 
civilisation. The Syllabus was an indiscreet and unnecessary 
document, raising questions and allaying none, but silencing 
discussion by the hammer-strokes of a prerogative which has 
still to be defined. The Syllabus sharpened the distinction 
between two parties of Catholics : those who tried to explain it 
and modify it — who, like Newman, held that it was a document 
for experts without any importance for the ordinary believer ; 
and those, on the other hand, like Manning and William Ward, 
who accepted it literally and submitted to the whole of its 
teaching. One result of the Syllabus was that through its 
political assertions Pius lost the friendship of Napoleon. By his 
arrangement with Cavour the Italian Government moved to 
Florence, and all the French soldiers left Rome. The idea that 
Rome should be the capital of the new kingdom, although 
slightly tinged with sacrilege, was already a possible development. 
If the verdict on it in Paris was the celebrated " Jamais, jamais ! " 
of Rouher, in Italy the French Secretary wrote to Cavour : " Of 
course the result of all this is that you will eventually go to 
Rome, but a sufficient interval must elapse to save us from 
responsibility ". 

But when it came to the point, the Catholicism of Napoleon 
was too strong for him. The death of Cavour cleared the way 
for Garibaldi's independent action with the radical wing of the 
Young Italy party at his back. He began to attack Rome, but 
the uncertainty of the Italian Government gave Pius time to 
collect an army of defence. To this army Napoleon contributed. 
Garibaldi succeeded at Monte Rotondo in October, 1867, but the 
Italian Government failed to support him by stirring up a rising 
in Rome, upon which he counted for success. The French, 
therefore, defeated him at Mentana on November 3. The 
attitude of France was extremely irritating to the Italian 
Government, and when in 1870 the French wanted help 
against Germany, the Italians were able to bargain for the 
sacrifice of Rome. Napoleon was too clerical to give in, but the 
crisis of his overthrow effected the same end. 

Before the last round of the old contest for temporal power 



CONCLUSION 381 

was fought to a finish, the relentless logic of Pius IX. brought 
him to the climax of his reign, the Vatican Council of 1870. 
His passion for definition had brought into question his authority 
to define the faith. The word Infallibility had been hovering on 
the lips of Catholics throughout his reign. It was not a sudden 
invention nor a wild flight of papal pretension. It was simply 
the logical conclusion of one view of the character of the Papacy. 
There was another view — the view of the minority i \ the Vatican 
Council — but this never found expression owing to the unfree 
nature of the proceedings, and its upholders were gradually 
reduced by strong censorship to twenty Bishops, who stayed 
away from the final voting out of respect for the Holy Father. 

On July 14, 1870, the Vatican Council passed the famous 
definition, thus worded, "It is a dogma divinely revealed that 
the Koman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, 
in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians, 
he defines by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority doctrine 
concerning faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, 
is, by the Divine assistance promised to him in the person of 
St. Peter, possessed! of that Infallibility wherewith the Divine 
Kedeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining 
doctrine concerning faith or morals ; and that therefore such 
definitions of the Roman Pontiff are unalterable of themselves 
and not by reason of the consent of the Church ". 

The Infallibility decree, however important it may be theo- 
logically, had very little political importance. Those who had 
come to the Council to oppose it ended in refraining from fear of 
schism. A form of words has a less enduring significance than a 
course of action, and the minority were right in the instinct which 
told them that posterity would look upon this question — so burn- 
ing in their minds and consciences — as a Sacristry dispute. The 
old Catholic schism, which some of them embraced, survives 
to-day as a mere protest, and Dollinger, the chief opponent of 
Infallibility, never joined it. The Council itself was a personal 
triumph for Pius IX., and wrapt in the majesty of his victory he 
turned to face the last defeat of temporal power. 

The events leading to the last battle of the history of the 
Papacy have been vividly described by an eye-witness. " In that 
burning summer-time, we, who were staying in Rome saw the 
French Bishops depart, and knew that the French soldiers would 
soon follow them. . . . Thirty thousand Italian troops kept a 
watch on the frontier, ready to break in if the Romans would 
seize Rome. But, as ever, the Romans did no more than buy 
flags which might be hung out according to fortune, the Pope's 



382 A SHOKT HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 

colours so long as they were needed, the tricolour invented long 
ago by Republican Bologna when King Victor's regiments should 
come marching in. The King himself was torn between feelings 
of gratitude to France, and the conviction that if he did not put 
an end to the temporal power it would cost him his throne. . . . 
After a moment of hesitation, ministers were allowed to act. 
Ponza di San Martino brought a royal letter to the Vatican in 
which 'with the devotion of a son, the faith of a Catholic, the 
loyalty of a King, and the heart of an Italian,' Victor Emmanuel 
told Pius IX. that he intended to occupy the Papal States. The 
Pope answered by a single word — ' Might then comes before 
right '. When for the last time, at the Piazza dei Termini, he 
made an official appearance in public, the Holy Father was 
greeted by the Romans with frantic enthusiasm. But they had 
their two sets of flags ready." 

The battle itself was a tournament, carried out with chivalry 
and courtesy on both sides. Negotiations respectfully tendered 
were civilly declined. The conflict lasted a few minutes only. 
General Cadorna had secret orders to drive the Pope's troops to 
the Leonine city and to isolate them there with the Pope. The 
Pope on his side ordered a feigned resistance, but the zeal of his 
supporters caused a little bloodshed which a misunderstanding 
made inevitable. "At ten o'clock," says Canon Barry, "we saw 
the white flag waving high over St. Peter's dome. We heard afar 
off from our College roof the thunder of the captains and the 
shouting, as through the shattered walls of the Porta Pia streamed 
in a mixed array of soldiers, refugees, camp followers, along the 
street afterwards named from the twentieth of September. Early 
in the afternoon we saw Italian standards floating from the 
Capitol. Rome had once conquered Italy. Now Italy had 
conquered Rome" (Canon William Barry, in "The Papacy and 
Modern Times "). 

The tournament finished according to the best traditions of 
mimic war, and the military salute was accorded to the vanquished 
by the victors, as the papal army marched to lay down its arms 
in the Villa Belvedere. In May, 1871, the Law of Guarantees 
was passed in the Italian Parliament, which "guaranteed" the 
sovereign status of the Pope, his appropriation of the Vatican 
and the Lateran, his absolute and unfettered spiritual authority, 
and provided for him a net endowment of £129,000 a year. The 
law was clumsily framed, and unsuccessfully proffered. The 
endowment was never accepted, and Pius IX. preferred the 
dignified poverty of a mendicant Prince to the compromising 
position of an Italian pensioner. His policy for the next seven 



CONCLUSION 383 

years was in accordance with the advice sent him by France, 
"Protest, refuse, and wait for further mutations in France". 
Apart from politics, he remained on courteous terms with the 
King of Italy. He watched the affairs of the young kingdom, 
guided, until 1876, by the Rights, who aimed at restoring order 
on conservative lines, and after 1876 by the Lefts, who soon 
began to stir up fresh agitations against Austria, which are still 
among the world problems which the Peace of 1920 has to solve. 

In January, 1878, Pius sent his own Confessor to convey his 
personal forgiveness and the Blessed Sacrament to the " Gentle- 
man-king " on his death-bed. A month later Pius followed him 
to the grave, his death ending the last and courtliest of personal 
duels of the temporal power. 

Leo XIII. (1878-1903) was eleeted by the most peaceful con- 
clave that ever met. He brought to his pontificate a tactful, 
conciliatory temperament, typical of the best traditions of nine- 
teenth-century diplomacy, but he had a firm will and views as 
uncompromising as those of Pio Nono on the question of the 
temporal power. On the whole, in spite of the circumscribed 
sphere of active life which it entailed, the position of the apostolic 
prisoner was the one which best fitted in with the fact and the 
theory of the relationship between the Pope and the King of 
Italy. So Leo XIII. prolonged the self-imposed captivity, in 
spite of which his pontificate was a brilliant and fruitful epoch 
in the history of the Papacy. His relations with the Crown, and 
particularly with Victor Emmanuel III., were still more friendly 
than before, and probably the fear of loss of prestige in Europe 
has been the chief obstacle in the way of complete reconciliation. 
The Italian Government has taken the Catholic missions in the 
East under its protection, and under Pius X., an Encyclical of 
June 11, 1905, called on Italian Catholics to be prepared to take 
part in the government of Italy. 

On the other hand, the tendency since 1870 throughout the 
Catholic world has been in the direction of separating Church and 
State. In France, the most conspicuous example, the Encyclical, 
" Immortale Dei," of 1885, ended the opposition of the Catholics 
to the Republican Government. Gradually the Government, on 
its side, came to seek the support of the Catholics to counter- 
balance the growth of the opposition party of the Socialists. But 
the extremists in the Catholic party made them uncomfortable 
bedfellows for a Government which was only clerical from neces- 
sity. In particular, the extreme Catholics, pushed on by the 
Jesuits, created an anti-Semitic movement in France, which 
gained impetus from outside and culminated in the Dreyfus 



384 A SHOET HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 

incident. The condemnation of Dreyfus for treason in 1894, the 
discovery of his innocence four years later, and his ultimate 
official pardon for a crime which he had never committed seemed 
to the Republicans, who incurred the responsibility for it, to 
point to an Ultramontane- Army plot. This was the beginning of 
the spirit in France which led to the State action against the 
Religious Houses in 1902, the quarrel with the Pope in 1904, and 
the final separation of Church and State under Briand's Ministry 
in 1906 and 1907. The Catholic Church in France, following the 
Pope's advice and example, forfeited her privileges rather than 
submit to anti-clerical legislation, and gained in return that 
claim on her children's loyalty which has met with so glorious 
a response. 

"My Kingdom is not of this world," was the great political 
inspiration of the Church. In the Middle Ages the Regnum Dei 
was one with the earthly kingdom. The men of those days knew 
no other citizenship than the citizenship of Heaven; their 
failures were sins and their virtues were Christian graces. The 
Church ennobled their wars and called them Crusades; the 
standard of Knighthood was the standard of the Grail. Those 
who wished to do good in association founded monasteries ; the 
inspired individualist became a hermit or built a Cathedral. It 
was the glory of the Papacy that it held the whole world in 
obedience to the Christian ideal; it was its inevitable danger 
that all the activities of men and the manifold forms of life and 
enterprise pressed into the fold, and crowded under the Church's 
banner. Temporal power, and all the secularities which flowed 
from it ; worldliness, and the wickedness of the world — the over- 
exuberant, hedonistic life of the Renaissance — these forces 
flooded in, and it was hard for the Popes, themselves the children 
of their generation, to set a limit to the boundaries of Heaven. 
The greatest of the political discoveries of the modern world is 
the separation of the various functions of government. This 
was an easier and therefore an earlier discovery than the 
greater separation of Church and State. The later history of the 
Papacy is the gradual rediscovery of the true foundation of 
spiritual power, and the readjustment of the world to that end. 
With the withdrawal of the Church from the world has come the 
awakening of the world's need for religion. The questions have 
been asked — What have the Churches done to heal the wounds of 
the world-war ? Why was the Pope's intervention so futile and 
so unheeded ? Why is peace on earth still a vision unfulfilled ? 
To these questions there are many answers, but in the history of 
the Papacy there is one to be found. The Church is a protest, 



CONCLUSION 385 

pointing to God. Other ages, accepting war and social violence 
as consistent with their cruder conscience, called God to their 
aid as the Captain of their hosts. But we, in our generation, 
have our clearer discernment of the essential incongruity between 
the passions which produce war and which war produces, and 
the nature of the Christian faith. These things silence our 
prayers, and even make us intolerant of the intervention of 
religion in warfare. Rightly or wrongly we offer up, not the 
victory, but the suffering to God, who is our King. 



INDEX 



Abelard, 142-146. 
Acacius of Constantinople, 29. 
iEneas Sylvius, 259, 262, 276. 
Agapetus I., 32. 

— II., 89-91. 
Agathon, 54. 

Agilulf of Lombardy, 44, 45. 

Alaric, 16, 18. 

Alberic, 87-91. 

Albornoz, Cardinal, 222-225. 

Alexander II., 110-114. 

— III., 150-155. 

— IV., 179-180. 

— VI., 287-298. 

— VII., 352-356. 
Alfonso of Naples, 258-267. 

Aragon, 245-256. 

Anaclete, 139, 140. 
Anagori, 199-201. 
Anastasius I., 16. 

— H., 29. 
Arians, 11-18, 30-35. 

Arnold of Brescia, 143, 145-149. 
Astolf of Lombardy, 60-62. 
Athanasius, 11-13. 
Attila, 26, 27. 
Augustine, 40-46. 
Avignon, 203-226. 

Basil, Emperor, 82. 
Basle, Council of, 253-257. 
Becket, Thomas, 152, 153. 
Belisarius, 32-34. 
Benedict Antipope, 233-236. 

— m., 78, 79. 

— Vn., 95, 96. 

— vm., 101, 102. 

— IX., 102-106. 

— XI., 201, 202. 

— XII., 215-217. 

— XIV., 362, 363. 
Benedictines, 37, 88. 
Berengar of Friuli, 86, 87, 

Ivrea, 89-93. 

Boniface I., 20. 

— III., 51. 

— IV., 51. 

— VIII., 191-200. 

— IX., 231-234. 



Borgia, 290-298. 

Braccio, 247, 258. 

Brakespeare, Nicholas, see Hadrian IV. 

Bruno of Toul, see Leo IX. 

Cadalus Antipope, 110-114. 
Caius, 4. 

Calcedon, Council of, 24, 32, 33. 
Calixtus I., 7. 

— II., 136, 137. 
Calvin, 326. 
Canossa, 120, 121. 

Carlo Borromes, Cardinal, 331-334. 
Carloman, 65, 66. 
Cavour, 374-380. 
Celestine I., 20, 21. 

— V., 191, 192. 
Celidonius, 25. 
Cencius, 117. 

Cesarini, Cardinal, 254-259. 
Charles Albert of Piedmont, 374-376. 

— Augustus, 65-71. 

— Martel, 58-61. 

— of Anjou, 182-191. 
Spain, 309-325. 

— IV., 216-224. 

— V., 329-330. 

— VIII., 287-292. 
Christophorus, 64-66. 
Clement II., 104-105. 

— IV., 183-187. 

— V., 202-205. 

— VI., 217-220. 

— VII., 229-233. 

— VIII., 341-344. 

— XL, 360-361. 

Cognac, League of, 315, 316. 
Concordat, First, 367. 
Conrad II., 102, 103. 

— Hohenstaufen, 144-146. 
Conradin, 178, 180, 186, 187. 
Consalvi, Cardinal, 370, 371. 
Constance, Council of, 238-242. 
Constans I., 12. 

— n., 53, 54. 
Constantine, 9. 

— Copronymous, 60. 

— Pogonatus, 54. 
Constantius, 11-13. 

387 



388 



A SHOET HISTOKY OF THE PAPACY 



Crescent, 94-101, 109. 
Cyril of Alexandria, 20. 

Dam asus, 13. 

Dante, 194-208. 

Desiderius of Lombardy, 63-68. 

Monte Cassino, see Victor III. 

Deusdedit, 52. 

Djem, 287-291. 

Domnus, 54. 

Donations of Constantine, 67, 68. 



Edward I. of England, 194-196. 

— III. of England, 219. 
Elizabeth of England, 332-339. 
Ephesus " Robber Council," 24. 
Eugenius III., 145, 146. 

— IV., 253-260. 
Eulalius, 20. 

Eutychianism, 24, 32, 33. 
Eutychius, 57. 






Felix III., 29. 

— IV., 31, 32. 

— Antipope, 13. 
Ferdinand I., 331-333. 

— II., 346-349. 
Flavian, 24. 

Flotte, Peter, 196, 198. 
Formosus, 84. 
Francis, 322-324. 
Frangipani, 138, 139. 
Frederick Barbarossa, 146-156. 

— II., 159-178. 

— III., 262-276. 

Garibaldi, 374-380. 
Gelasius II., 136. 
Genseric, 26, 27. 
Gerbert, see Sylvester II. 
Godfrey of Tuscany, 108-112. 
Gregory II., 56-58. 

— III., 58. 

— IV., 75. 

— V., 97, 98. 

— VI., 103, 104. 

— VII., 104-124. 

— IX., 169-174. 

— X., 187-189. 

— XI., 227-228. 

— XII., 234-243. 

— XIII., 336-338. 
Gustavus Adolphus, 349. 

Hadrian I., 65-69. 

— II., 82, 83. 

— IV., 146-151. 

— VI., 312, 313 

Hanno of Cologne, 111-113. 
Henry II., 101-102. 



Henry III., 108. 

— IV., 108-131. 

— V., 131-138. 

— VI., 156-158. 

— VIII. of England, 317-320. 

— IV. of France, 339-345. 
Heraclius, 52. 
Hermas, 5. 

Hilary of Aries, 25. 

Sardinia, 29. 

Hildebrand, see Gregory VII. 
Hippolytus, 6, 7. 
Honorius I., 52. 

— II., 137-139. 

— III., 168-169. 
Hormesdas, 30. 
Hugh Capet, 96. 
Huss, John, 238-241. 

Infallibility, Decree of, 381. 
Innocent I., 3, 15-21. 

— II., 139. 

— III., 157-166. 

— IV., 174-179. 

— V., 220-223. 

— VIII., 285-288. 

— X., 352-355. 

— XI., 357-358. 

— XII., 358-360. 
Inquisition, 329-342. 

Jansenists, 351-363. 

Jesuits, 323-364. 

Joanna of Naples, 218-230, 247-256. 

John I., 30, 31. 

— II., 32. 

— III., 35. 

— VL, 56. 

— VIII., 83. 

— IX., 85. 

— X.,86. 

— XI., 87, 88. 

— XII., 89-93. 

— XHI., 94. 

— XIV., 95. 

— XV., 96, 97. 

— XVII., 100. 

— XVIII., 100. 

— XIX., 102. 

— XXII., 205-215. 

— XXIII., 237-241. 

— the Faster, 43, 
Judices, 64. 
Julius I., 11. 

— II., 282-304. 
Justin, 29, 30. 
Justinian, 32-35. 

Ladislas, 232-238. 

Lambert of Spoleto, 84, 85, 90. 

Lawrence, 29. 



INDEX 



389 



Leander of Seville, 46. 
Leo L, 22-27, 41, 46. 

— III., 69-74. 

— IV., 77. 

— VII., 88, 89. 

— VIII., 92, 93. 

— IX., 106, 108. 

— X., 304-312. 

— XIII., 383. 

— the Isthaurian, 56-59. 
Lewis the Pious, 74-82. 

— of Bavaria, 209-216. 
Literius, 12, 13. 
Liutprand, 57-60. 
Lothar, 75-77. 
Lothian, 138, 139. 
Louis III., 249, 250. 

— XI., 271-284. 

— XII., 294-306. 

— XIV., 353-360. 
Luther, 311-318. 

Lyons, Decree of, 175, 176. 

Machiavelu, 284-296. 
Manfred, 178-186. 
Manichaeans, 23. 
Marcionism, 5, 6. 
Marcus Aurelius, 8. 
Marius I., 84. 
Marjorian, 27. 
Marozia, 86-88. 
Marsiglio of Padua, 209-216. 
Martin I., 53, 54. 

— V., 242, 243, 247-253. 

Matilda of Tuscany, 112-122, 128-138. 
Maurice (Emperor), 39, 42-45. 
Maximilian, 292-311. 

— of Bavaria, 347-348. 
Mazarin, 354, 355. 
Mazzini, 375-377. 
Medici, 281-314. 
Metternich, 371-377. 
Milan, Council of, 9-12. 
Monarchianism, 7. 
Monophysitism, 29, 30, 52. 
Monothelitism, 52-54. 
Montanism, 6. 

Nantes, Edict of, 355. 
Napoleon, 365-368. 
Nestorian Controversy, 20. 
Nicsea, 11. 
Nicholas I., 79-81. 

— II., 109-110. 

— V., 262-265. 
Nogant, 198-200. 

Oratorians, 320. 
Otto the Great, 89-95. 

— II., 94-95. 

— III., 95-100. 



Pascal, 352, 353. 
Paschalis I., 74, 75. 

— II., 131-136. 
Patarines, 114-116. 
Patripassionem, see Monarchianism. 
Paul I., 63. 

— II., 276-278. 

— III., 320-325. 

— IV., 329-331. 

— V., 345-347. 
Pazzi, 282, 283. 
Pelagius, 19, 34-40. 
Pepin, 62-65. 

Peter Damian, 103-113. 

— Pieroni, see Anaclete II. 
Petrarch, 221-226. 

p Augustus, 159-163. 
Bel, 194-207. 
lip II. of Spain, 330-341. 
-ias, 42, 51, 52. 
, Council of, 236, 237. 
Pius II., 259-276. 

— IV., 331-333. 

— V., 333-336. 

— VI., 363-366. 

— VII., 366-371. 

— IX., 375-383. 
Polycarp, see Justin. 
Porcaro, 262-264. 
Port Eoyal, 352-355. 
Praxeas, 7. 
Priscillianism, 25. 
Pulcheria, 24. 
Pyrrhus, 52. 

Ratisbon, Congress of, 321, 322. 

Riario, 281-285. 

Richelieu, 347-354. 

Rienzi, Cola di, 217-222. 

Robert Guiscard, 116, 121-123, 128. 

Roger of Sicily, 139-144. 

Rovere, della, 278-304. 

Rudolf, Emperor, 186-190. 

Satellius, 7. 

Saint Augustine, 40, 46. 

— Benedict, 13, 37-39. 

— Bernard, 13, 139-146. 

— Bonaventura, 187-188. 

— Catherine of Siena, 227-229. 

— Clement, 4. 

— Columbian, 46. 

— Dominic, 166. 

— Francis of Assisi, 166. 

— Germain, Declaration of, 357, 358. 

— Gregory, 37-48. 

— Ignatius, 323-329. 

— Jerome, 13-18. 

— Justin, 5, 6. 

— Peter, 3. 

Damian, 103-113. 



" 



390 



A SHOKT HISTOEY OF THE PAPACY 



Saint Thomas Aquinas, 207, 208. 

Sardica, Council of, 12, 16. 

Savonarola, 288-292. 

Sergius I., 54, 55. 

Severinus, 52. 

Sforza, 243-259, 282-290. 

Sigismund, 237-242, 254-257. 

Silverius, 32, 33. 

Simplicius, 28, 29. 

Siricius, 14. 

Sixtus III., 20. 

— IV., 279-288. 

— V., 337-341. 
Stephen II., 61, 62. 

— III., 65. 

— IV., 74, 109. 

— V., 84. 

— of Hungary, 99. 
Stilicho, 17, 18. 
Sylvester I., 9-11. 

— II., 98. 

— III., 103, 104. 
Symmachus, 29. 

Theodatus, 32. 

Theodora, 86. 

Theodore, 52. 

Theodoric, 29-31. 

Theodosius, 24. 

Theophilus, 17. 

Totila, 34. 

Toto of Naples, 64. 

Trent, Council of, 321-824, 331-334. 

Trinitarian Controversy, 11, 20. 



Unigenitus, Bull, 361. 
Urban II., 128-130. 

— IV., 182. 

— V., 223-227. 

— VI., 229-231. 

— VIII., 347-351. 
Ursincinus, 13. 



Valentinian, 17. 
Verdun, Treaty of, 75. 
Victor I., 7. 

— II., 108. 

— III., 124-128. 

— Antipope, 151, 152. 

— Emmanuel, 377-383. 
Vigilius, 32-35. 
Vitalian, 53. 
Voltaire, 363. 



Waelenstein, 347-349. 
Westphalia, 349-351. 
William of Champeaux, 142. 

— I. of England, 114, 121. 

— III. of England, 359, 360. 

— of Ockham, 208-211. 
Worms, Edict of, 312-314. 
Wycliffe, John, 238-241. 



Zeno, 29. 
Zephyrinus, 7. 
Zosimus, 19. 






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